What was the purpose of OLCI Tandem?

In Summer 2018, during the Sentinel-3A / Sentinel-3B tandem phase, thanks to a joint effort of the Sentinel-3 team and the EE-8 FLuorescence EXplorer (FLEX) team, the Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) (on the B unit) was operated for selected orbits in a special sequence acquiring 45 individual bands, and maximising the spectral resolution in the oxygen absorption bands. This mode for the instrument enabled OLCI to acquire a set of measurements that tested the future FLEX Level-2A processing (i.e., atmospheric characterisation using OLCI A and subsequent atmospheric correction for OLCI B in different spectral channels).

What was the outcome of OLCI Tandem?

In total, 24 acquisitions were taken in this mode during the time window 14 June to 14 August 2018. Each acquisition covered more than 1500 km along track, and the pattern was optimised in order to collect data over several ground sites instrumented with continuously operating systems and regularly overpassed with airborne systems within the ATMO-FLEX and FLEXSense ESA projects.

Download the OLCI Tandem Final Report

Data Citation Users, who, in their research, use ESA Earth Observation data that have been assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), are asked to use it when citing the data source in their publications:

Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.5270/ESA-624426c European Space Agency, High resolution Sentinel-3B OLCI data during the tandem phase: a novel dataset towards the FLEX/Sentinel-3 mission (OLCI Tandem)

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