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    • OPERA Radiometric Terrain Corrected SAR Backscatter from Sentinel-1 validated product (Version 1)

    Metadata Updated: September 18, 2025

    The Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA) Radiometric Terrain Corrected (RTC) SAR Backscatter from Sentinel-1 (S1) validated product consists of radar backscatter normalized with respect to the topography. The product maps signals related to the physical properties of ground scattering objects, such as surface roughness and soil moisture and/or vegetation. The OPERA RTC-S1 product is derived from Copernicus Sentinel-1 Interferometric Wide (IW) Single Look Complex (SLC) data with a near global scope and temporal sampling coincident with the availability of S1 SLC data. Each OPERA RTC-S1 product corresponds to a single S1 burst projected onto a pre-defined UTM/Polar stereographic map projection system map grid with a 30-meter spacing. The Copernicus global 30 m (GLO-30) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is the reference DEM used to correct for the impacts of topography and to geocode the product. The OPERA RTC-S1 product is normalized to the backscatter coefficient gamma-naught, ɣ0, obtained from the original radar brightness beta-naught, β0, through radiometric terrain correction. The RTC-S1 product is distributed as cloud optimized GeoTIFFs with one GeoTIFF file per processed polarization. The RTC-S1 product metadata is provided in the Hierarchical Data Format version 5 (HDF5) format. The OPERA RTC-S1 product contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2022-2025).Due to the S1 mission’s narrow orbital tube, radar-geometry layers such as incidence angle, local incidence angle, number of looks, and RTC Area Normalization Factor (ANF) vary slightly over time for each position on the ground, and therefore are considered static. These static layers are provided separately from the OPERA RTC-S1 product, as they are produced only once or a limited number of times, to account for changes in the DEM, in the S1 orbit, or in the static-layers generation algorithm. The static layers are available in the associated OPERA Radiometric Terrain Corrected SAR Backscatter from Sentinel-1 Static Layers validated product (Version 1) dataset.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

    Downloads & Resources

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date September 18, 2025

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date September 18, 2025
    Publisher ASF;NASA/JPL/OPERA
    Maintainer
    Identifier 10.5067/SNWG/OPERA_L2_RTC-S1_V1
    Data Last Modified 2025-09-11
    Category Earth Science
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 026:00
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Harvest Object Id 4db3a564-e70c-456e-ae74-b47ebcc8cb81
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Homepage URL https://search.asf.alaska.edu/
    Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-90}
    Program Code 026:000
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 985f85a101cb516c232a0decb5730741bbd89e5a22b653a016a1509e9ea63629
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial
    Temporal 2020-12-31/2020-12-31

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