Sentinel-6A MF: High-Resolution Near-Real-Time Ocean Surface Topography

Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich's Poseidon-4 SAR altimeter delivers Level 2 ocean data with a 3-hour latency. This reduced product contains 1 Hz Ku-band measurements for sea surface height, anomalies, and significant wave height, analogous to the Jason-3 OGDR product. It excludes the standard product's higher-frequency 20 Hz observations.

Use Cases

• Monitoring sea level rise and ocean circulation based on Sea Surface Height Anomalies (SSHA)
• Forecasting wave conditions for maritime safety using Significant Wave Height (SWH) and wind-speed
• Calibrating and validating ocean models with high-resolution altimetry corrections
• Studying mesoscale ocean features like eddies from 1 Hz Ku-band range and orbital altitude data

Strengths

• Provides high-resolution (HR) altimetry data with a near-real-time (NRT) latency of 3 hours
• Contains multiple key oceanographic variables: SSH, SSHA, SWH, and wind-speed from the AMR-C instrument
• Data is cross-platform, appearing on Data.gov and NASA Earthdata, indicating its importance and curation

Limitations

• Column names and dataset size/row counts are unspecified across all sources, limiting technical assessment
• Metadata completeness varies; license is noted as 'other-license-specified' on Data.gov but is null on NASA Earthdata
• The product is a reduced release, excluding the standard product's 20 Hz observations

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Processed from L1B altimetry measurements from the Poseidon 4 SAR altimeter on the Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich spacecraft.

Time Range

null

Freshness

2026-04-09 22:05:22.667755

Geography

Global ocean coverage from the satellite's orbit.