Sentinel-2 L1C (SAFE)

Sentinel-2 L1C (SAFE) provides Full Scenes data (L1C pre-processing or TOA). Sentinel 2 is a multi-spectral imaging mission, capturing visual, infrared and SWIR information. All Sentinel-2 L1C data are available since November 2016. The output format is identical to the unzipped SAFE folder that can be acquired from ESA’s Scihub or other DIAS systems.

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 is an optical mission at high spatial resolution (10 m to 60 m) over land and coastal waters. The mission is based on two satellites featuring the Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI) with 13 spectral bands and a swath width of 290 km. AOI selection of this block will yield a full scene that contains the extent of your AOI and if paired with a processing algorithm, the entire scene will be processed as the AOI selector is not a clip function.

Technical information

The products are radiometrically and geometrically corrected (including orthorectification). Important application areas for Sentinel-2 imagery are land cover monitoring (agriculture, forestry), coastal area monitoring, inland water monitoring, glacier monitoring and flood mapping

Note: This is an Analytic imagery product that returns multispectral bands with 16 bits. Please check the corresponding block descriptions if they explicitly state that they can handle this type of data.

Feature	Info
Archive date / refresh frequency	Rolling archive is 9 months / Archives available from mission start (2015) on request
/ Archive warmup functionality will be released in H1 '21
Frequency bands	13 spectral bands (see “Band details” below for more information)
Resolution	See resolution information in “Band details” below. Swath: 290km
Processing level	L1C
Data format	SAFE archive containing JPEG2000 imagery

Band details

Band Category	Spatial Resolution	Revisit
Visible (4)	10 m	5 days
Near-Infrared (6)	20 m	5 days
Short-wave IR (3)	60 m	5 days

Name	Resolution	Description
B01	60 m	Coastal aerosol, 442.7 nm (S2A), 442.2 nm (S2B)
B02	10 m	Blue, 492.4 nm (S2A), 492.1 nm (S2B)
B03	10 m	Green, 559.8 nm (S2A), 559.0 nm (S2B)
B04	10 m	Red, 664.6 nm (S2A), 664.9 nm (S2B)
B05	20 m	Vegetation red edge, 704.1 nm (S2A), 703.8 nm (S2B)
B06	20 m	Vegetation red edge, 740.5 nm (S2A), 739.1 nm (S2B)
B07	20 m	Vegetation red edge, 782.8 nm (S2A), 779.7 nm (S2B)
B08	10 m	NIR, 832.8 nm (S2A), 832.9 nm (S2B)
B8A	20 m	Narrow NIR, 864.7 nm (S2A), 864.0 nm (S2B)
B09	60 m	Water vapour, 945.1 nm (S2A), 943.2 nm (S2B)
B10	60 m	SWIR – Cirrus, 1373.5 nm (S2A), 1376.9 nm (S2B)
B11	20 m	SWIR, 1613.7 nm (S2A), 442.2 nm (S2B)
B12	20 m	SWIR, 2202.4 nm (S2A), 442.2 nm (S2B)

Use cases

Thanks to the MSI and a frequent revisit (every 5 days) of every place on Earth, it is particularly valuable for agricultural and forestry applications and change detection. Nevertheless, other applications can also benefit from this optical instrument – for example lake and coastal water pollution assessments or disaster monitoring, e.g. volcanic eruptions or landslides.

Technical documentation

Please see the block’s documentation or check the provider website.