The Sentinel-3 Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR): Expected Performance and Products
Donlon, Craig¹; Mavrocordatos, Constantin¹; O'Carroll, Anne²; Frerrick, Johannes¹; Nieke, Jeans¹; Berruti, Bruno^1
1ESA, NETHERLANDS; ²EUMETSAT, GERMANY

Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) is a joint initiative of the European Commission (EC) and European Space Agency (ESA), which aims at achieving an autonomous and operational Earth observation capacity. Two Sentinel-3 satellites are in development with the second satellite expected approximately 18 months after the first. The overall service duration is planned to be 20 years with several satellites. This presentation will provide an provide an overview of the Sentinel-3 Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR), the expected instrument performance and the portfolio of SLSTR data products.

The SLSTR instrument, based on ENVISAT's AATSR, is designed to observe ocean and land surface temperatures with an accuracy of better than 0.3 K. This requires the observation of a given zone using a nadir and an along track view (dual view), with different observation angles. On SLSTR, this is achieved by the implementation of two separate scan mechanisms, providing a large near-nadir swath (~1400 km) and a smaller backwards-looking swath (~750 km). SLSTR accommodates 9 channels, 3 in the visible and near infrared range, 3 in the short-wave infrared range, 1 in mid-infrared range and 2 in the thermal infrared range. Two additional dedicated channels allow fire detection.

The Level 1b product combines the top of atmosphere observations of the all 9 spectral channels expressed as radiances for the solar bands, i.e. S1 - S3, and brightness temperature values for the thermal channels S4-S9. At Level 2 the products include for water surface high precision estimates of sea surface temperatures as operational continuation of the A(A)TSR instrument series on ERS and ENVISAT. Surface temperature values are also provided for land surfaces.

This presentation will provide an overview of the Sentinel-3 Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR), the expected instrument performance and the portfolio of SLSTR data products.