Starting in January 2020 for a 2-year period and being immediately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the “Copernicus Space Component Validation for Land Surface Temperature, Aerosol Optical Depth and Water Vapor Sentinel-3 Products” (referenced in the following by “LAW”) was a project managed by ESA/ESRIN.

The project’s aim was to perform a more extensive and systematic validation against ground-based measurements of three Sentinel-3 (S3) datasets: the Integrated Water Vapor included in OL_2_LFR products, Aerosol Optical Depth included in SY_2_AOD products and Land Surface Temperature provided by SL_2_LST products. The validation was followed by an analysis phase to better identify areas where products are limited and algorithm evolutions and improvements increasing the quality of these products.

A preliminary analysis of the available ground-based measurements showed a gap in the LST networks, in particular regarding the biome distribution. To foster the validation of LST against a wider variety of stations, five new LST stations designed and built by KIT were deployed (https://law.acri-st.fr/sites). Matchups between the new LST ground-based measurements and S3 products, but also between existing AOD and IWV in-situ measurements and S3 products are available from the LAW website.

While the project ended in 2024, in March 2025 four of LST stations continue to operate. However, station maintenance still needs to be organised. Only station KIT-Forest (200 m high wind tower at KIT Campus North) continues to be maintained by IMKASF.

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