Sentinel-6A MF: High-Resolution Ocean Surface Topography from Satellite Altimetry

The Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich spacecraft provides global ocean surface topography data from its Poseidon-4 SAR altimeter. This Level 2 High Resolution Short Time Critical product contains sea surface height, anomalies, and significant wave height measurements, processed with a 36-hour latency. It is a reduced version analogous to the Jason-3 IGDR product, excluding higher-frequency 20 Hz observations.

Use Cases

• Monitoring sea level rise and ocean circulation patterns based on Sea Surface Height Anomalies (SSHA)
• Forecasting wave conditions for maritime operations based on Significant Wave Height (SWH) measurements
• Calibrating and validating ocean models using 1 Hz Ku-band range and orbital altitude data
• Analyzing short-term oceanic events like eddies or storms using the 36-hour latency STC product

Strengths

• Provides high-resolution (HR) altimetry data from the advanced Poseidon-4 SAR instrument on the Sentinel-6A spacecraft
• Offers a short time-critical (STC) latency of 36 hours for near-real-time applications
• Contains multiple key oceanographic variables: Sea Surface Height, anomalies, Significant Wave Height, and wind speed

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable across all platforms
• The product is a 'reduced' release that excludes the standard product's 20 Hz observations, offering lower temporal resolution
• License information is inconsistently reported as 'other-license-specified' or null, requiring further investigation

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Satellite altimetry from the Poseidon-4 instrument on the Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich spacecraft, processed from L1B to L2 data.

Time Range

The dataset is a continuous time-series product, but specific start and end dates are not provided.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-04-09 according to one datagov entry.

Geography

Global ocean coverage from the satellite's orbit.