Sentinel 3B download pulls un-needed granules from polar regions

[needham-michael]

Standard download granules step for Sentinel-3B began to pull large numbers of granules (8-9) on certain days in 2025 where other dates only pulled one or two granules. Looking at the raw data found that many of these granules were over the polar region, well outside of the case's bounding box.

Not sure if this is an issue with FHBA / earthaccess bbox / NASA Earthdata, etc.

Image below from 4/11/2025:

Here are all the granules downloaded for 4/11/2025

sh_data\S3B_OL_1_EFR____20250411T100003_20250411T100247_20250412T101644_0164_105_179_1440_ESA_O_NT_004.SEN3
sh_data\S3B_OL_1_EFR____20250411T114101_20250411T114346_20250412T120311_0165_105_180_1440_ESA_O_NT_004.SEN3
sh_data\S3B_OL_1_EFR____20250411T132200_20250411T132445_20250412T133908_0165_105_181_1440_ESA_O_NT_004.SEN3
sh_data\S3B_OL_1_EFR____20250411T150259_20250411T150544_20250412T151915_0165_105_182_1440_ESA_O_NT_004.SEN3
sh_data\S3B_OL_1_EFR____20250411T164358_20250411T164644_20250412T171525_0165_105_183_1440_ESA_O_NT_004.SEN3
sh_data\S3B_OL_1_EFR____20250411T165844_20250411T170144_20250412T171712_0179_105_183_2340_ESA_O_NT_004.SEN3
sh_data\S3B_OL_1_EFR____20250411T182457_20250411T182743_20250412T185407_0166_105_184_1440_ESA_O_NT_004.SEN3
sh_data\S3B_OL_1_EFR____20250411T200555_20250411T200842_20250412T202352_0167_105_185_1440_ESA_O_NT_004.SEN3
sh_data\S3B_OL_1_EFR____20250411T214654_20250411T214941_20250412T221502_0167_105_186_1440_ESA_O_NT_004.SEN3

[needham-michael]

Updated image showing all granules downloaded for 4/11/2026. Still not sure why this occurs but it seems to be an earthaccess issue, likely because the granules pass over the pole so weird things happen with the bounding box.

This image is based on granule metadata from earthaccess, so as a work-around could probably use geopandas to ensure there is an intersection between the granule and the case bounding box prior to download.