Digital Earth Africa Sentinel-2 Level-2A

The Sentinel-2 mission is part of the European Union Copernicus programme for Earth observations. Sentinel-2 consists of twin satellites, Sentinel-2A (launched 23 June 2015) and Sentinel-2B (launched 7 March 2017). The two satellites have the same orbit, but 180° apart for optimal coverage and data delivery. Their combined data is used in the Digital Earth Africa Sentinel-2 product. Together, they cover all Earth’s land surfaces, large islands, inland and coastal waters every 3-5 days. Sentinel-2 data is tiered by level of pre-processing. Level-0, Level-1A and Level-1B data contain raw data from the satellites, with little to no pre-processing. Level-1C data is surface reflectance measured at the top of the atmosphere. This is processed using the Sen2Cor algorithm to give Level-2A, the bottom-of-atmosphere reflectance (Obregón et al, 2019). Level-2A data is the most ideal for research activities as it allows further analysis without applying additional atmospheric corrections. The Digital Earth Africa Sentinel-2 dataset contains Level-2A data of the African continent. Digital Earth Africa does not host any lower-level Sentinel-2 data. Note that this data is a subset of the Sentinel-2 COGs dataset.