dataset · Europe
Water/Ice Cover S1+S2 2016-present (raster 60 m), Europe, daily
The Water and Ice Cover by Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 (WIC S1+S2) product is generated in near real-time at European scale. It results from the combination of WIC S1 and WIC S2 which are respectively water and ice cover data based on synthetic aperture radar data from the Sentinel-1 constellation and on optical satellite data from the Sentinel-2 constellation. The product provides the river and lake area covered by snow-covered or snow-free ice with a spatial resolution of 20 m x 20 m.
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Licence: other
Evidence quality: 55.9
Listed in cdse-stac public catalogue API on 2026-10-16; relevance/value screened (haiku).
Metadata checked: 2026-10-14T13:20:00.000Z
What's in it
- Data offered docs-verified
- river and lake water extent (open water) · river and lake ice cover (snow-covered or snow-free) · water/ice classification raster (WIC) · quality layer (WIC-QA) · pixel quality flags (QAFLAGS)
- Coverage docs-verified
- Europe (bbox approx. -32,27 to 46,72 lon/lat; includes the UK) · 2016-08-01 to present (open-ended)
- Resolution docs-verified
- 20 m x 20 m (spatial); daily temporal per title
- Update frequency docs-verified
- Near real-time, daily (product timeliness PT12H)
- Formats docs-verified
- GeoTIFF (cloud-optimized) · ZIP (zipped product archive) · XML (product metadata) · STAC 1.1.0 catalogue
- Access docs-verified
- Licence 'other': Copernicus Land Monitoring Service legal notice (https://land.copernicus.eu/en/data-policy). No auth in entry. creodias-s3 storage is requester-pays; cdse-s3 is not.
Useful for
- Use cases llm-inferred
- Flood risk: compare observed river and lake water extent against modelled flood extents for calibration or validation · Hydrometric QA: flag river and lake ice-cover periods that may affect gauge records · Ecology and BNG: map lake and river surface extent for waterbody habitat baselines · Event checks: use Sentinel-1 radar-derived water extent when cloud blocks optical imagery
- Audience llm-inferred
- flood consultants · hydrologists · GIS analysts · ecologists
Limitations
- Constraints llm-inferred
- Entry name and docs title say 'raster 60 m' but the description gives 20 m x 20 m; confirm the resolution before use · Licence is 'other' (CLMS legal notice); check reuse terms for commercial consultancy work · creodias-s3 storage is requester-pays, which may add cost · Optical pixels can be obscured by cloud or shadow; radar pixels have geometric-distortion classes; use the QA layers to filter · Provides surface water and ice extent only, with no depth, level or flow values · Data is tiled across UTM zones (EPSG:32625 to 32638), so mosaicking is needed for regional work · Near-real-time product at processing version v1.0; values may be revised, which is inferred rather than stated · Not an API or MCP tool; access is by raster/STAC download from S3-compatible storage
Evidence
Check upstream coverage, uncertainty and licence before use. Station observations are not forecasts or design levels.