Copernicus Sentinel-3 Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI)
The European Commission, in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA), began an ambitious Earth observation initiative called Copernicus to monitor the state of global environment and address climate-change issues. As part of this initiative, ESA developed a series of satellite missions that are called Sentinels. The Sentinel-3 series includes four missions, two, 3A and 3B, that are operationally active, and two, 3C and 3D, that await their launches in 2024 and 2025, respectively. Sentinel-3A was launched on February 16th 2016 and Sentinel-3B was launched on April 25th 2018. Both are multi-instrument platforms that focus on ocean surface topography as well as land and sea surface temperature. Each platform carries the Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR), the Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI), as well as a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and a Microwave Radiometer (MWR).
The OLCI instrument was developed in part to provide continuity with measurements made previously by the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument flown on Envisat. OLCI is a visible imaging push-broom radiometer with more spectral bands, improved signal-to-noise ratio, among other improvements, compared to MERIS. The OLCI has 21 spectral bands from 400 to 1200 nm and completely overlaps with SLSTR facilitating the opportunity for fused products. The OLCI swath is not centered at nadir which minimizes the occurrence of sun glint.
Links:
- Search for Copernicus Sentinel-3A OLCI Products
- Search for Copernicus Sentinel-3B OLCI Products
- Copernicus Sentinel-3 Data Terms and Conditions
- Sentinel-3 OLCI User Guide
- Sentinel-3 OLCI Technical Guide<
- Copernicus Sentinel-3
Technical Specifications
| Orbit: | 815 km, 10:00 am. mean local solar time. sun-synchronous, polar |
| Repeat Cycle: | 27 days |
| Swath Dimensions: | 1270 km, global coverage every 4 days |
| Spacecraft Weight: | 1250 kg |
| Spatial Resolution: |
300m full resolution 1200m reduced resolution |
| Quantization: | 12 bits |
| Field of View: | 14.2 deg |
| Wavebands: | 21 bands selectable across range: 400 nm to 1020 nm |
| Design Life: | 7.5 years |
| Duration: | operational |
| Operator: | EUMETSAT |
Channels (Bands)
| OLCI Band | Band centre λ (nm) | Band Width (nm) | Application |
| Oa1 | 400.00 | 15 | Aerosol correction, improved water constituent retrieval |
| Oa2 | 412.50 | 10 | Yellow substance and detrital pigments (Turbidity). |
| Oa3 | 442.50 | 10 | Chl absorption max biogeochemistry, vegetation |
| Oa4 | 442.00 | 10 | High Chl, other pigments |
| Oa5 | 510.00 | 10 | Chl, sediment, turbidity, red tide. |
| Oa6 | 560.00 | 10 | Chlorophyll reference (Chl minimum) |
| Oa7 | 620.00 | 10 | Sediment loading |
| Oa8 | 665.00 | 10 | Chl (2nd Chl abs. max.), sediment, yellow substance/vegetation |
| Oa9 | 673.75 | 7.5 | For improved fluorescence retrieval and to better account for smile together with the bands 665 and 680 nm |
| Oa10 | 681.25 | 7.5 | Chl fluorescence peak, red edge |
| Oa11 | 708.75 | 10 | Chl fluorescence baseline, red edge transition. |
| Oa12 | 753.75 | 7.5 | O2 absorption/clouds<comma> vegetation |
| Oa13 | 761.25 | 2.5 | O2 absorption band/aerosol corr. |
| Oa14 | 764.38 | 3.75 | Atmospheric correction |
| Oa15 | 767.50 | 2.5 | O2A used for cloud top pressure, fluorescence over land. |
| Oa16 | 778.75 | 15 | Atmos. corr./aerosol corr. |
| Oa17 | 865.00 | 20 | Atmos. corr./aclean word to html convertererosol corr., clouds, pixel co-registration. |
| Oa18 | 885.00 | 10 | Water vapour absorption reference band. Common reference band with SLST instrument. Vegetation monitoring. |
| Oa19 | 900.00 | 10 | Water vapour absorption/vegetation monitoring (max. reflectance) |
| Oa20 | 940.00 | 20 | Water vapour absorption, atmos./aerosol corr. |
| Oa21 | 1020.00 | 40 | Atmos./aerosol corr. |