Skip to content

Satellite imagery — Sentinel-1 SAR, Sentinel-2 multispectral, HLS, ESA WorldCover

Find global Earth-observation imagery for combined ocean / land analyses — from radar SAR for oil-slick detection to optical scenes for coastal-zone monitoring.

What this teaches

  • The four imagery collections in AQUAVIEW: sentinel-1-grd, sentinel-2-l2a, hls2-l30, esa-worldcover
  • Reading Sentinel scene IDs (e.g., S2B_17QMG_20260504_1_L2A) and tile / orbit conventions
  • Pairing imagery with ocean data for coastal-zone use cases

Sources used: sentinel-1-grd, sentinel-2-l2a, hls2-l30, esa-worldcover

Prompt

Find Sentinel-2 cloud-free scenes covering the Florida Keys for May 2026.
Give me the COG download URLs.

Transcript

1. Search Sentinel-2 L2A

search_datasets(
  collections = "sentinel-2-l2a",
  bbox = "-83,24,-80,25.5",
  datetime = "2026-05-01T00:00:00Z/2026-05-31T23:59:59Z",
  limit = 5
)

Real items:

Scene ID Tile Date Bbox
S2B_17QMG_20260504_1_L2A 17QMG 2026-05-04 16:06 UTC -81.94, 23.42 → -80.91, 24.30
S2B_17QNG_20260504_1_L2A 17QNG 2026-05-04 16:06 UTC -81.00, 23.42 → -79.92, 24.18
S2B_17QPG_20260504_0_L2A 17QPG 2026-05-04 16:06 UTC -80.02, 23.54 → -78.93, 24.41

Provider: ESA. Distributor: AWS Earth Search v1 at https://earth-search.aws.element84.com/v1. Each scene has 30+ assets covering all spectral bands as separate COGs (coastal, blue, green, red, nir, nir08, swir16, swir22, etc.) plus thumbnail and granule metadata XML.

2. Get the COG URLs

get_item(collection = "sentinel-2-l2a", item_id = "S2B_17QMG_20260504_1_L2A")

Returns full asset list. Each asset's href is a direct AWS S3 URL pattern like s3://sentinel-cogs/sentinel-s2-l2a-cogs/17/Q/MG/2026/5/S2B_17QMG_20260504_1_L2A/B04.tif (red band) — use --no-sign-request with the AWS CLI for free public access.

Result the agent gave

"135 Sentinel-2 L2A scenes cover the Florida Keys bbox in May 2026. Three Sentinel-2B scenes from a single overpass on May 4, 2026 (16:06 UTC) provide cross-Keys coverage:

  • S2B_17QMG_20260504_1_L2A — bbox -81.94°W to -80.91°W, 23.42°N to 24.30°N (western Keys including Marquesas / Dry Tortugas region)
  • S2B_17QNG_20260504_1_L2A — bbox -81.00°W to -79.92°W, 23.42°N to 24.18°N (central Keys around Key West)
  • S2B_17QPG_20260504_0_L2A — bbox -80.02°W to -78.93°W, 23.54°N to 24.41°N (eastern Keys / Florida Strait)

Each scene exposes 30+ assets covering all 13 spectral bands as cloud-optimized GeoTIFFs (coastal, blue, green, red, nir, nir08, swir16, swir22, plus the visual true-color composite, AOT, cloud mask, and granule metadata) hosted on AWS Open Data via Element 84's earth-search STAC API. Asset hrefs follow the AWS S3 layout under s3://sentinel-cogs/sentinel-s2-l2a-cogs/17/Q/MG/2026/5/.... Use the AWS CLI with --no-sign-request for free public access."

Variations

  • Sentinel-1 SAR (oil slick detection, sea ice, ship detection): switch to sentinel-1-grd. SAR works through clouds and at night.
  • Harmonized Landsat-Sentinel for time-series: use hls2-l30 for Landsat-8/9 surface reflectance gridded to MGRS tiles.
  • Land cover context: esa-worldcover for 10 m global land-cover maps (2020 + 2021), useful for shoreline change and coastal-zone assessment.
  • Cloud cover filter: combine with a filter on properties.eo:cloud_cover (CQL2) — e.g., <= 10 for cloud-free scenes.