Carbon dioxide in the air, monthly gridded (ACOS)
What it measures. The average amount of carbon dioxide in a column of air, mapped month by month onto an even grid. It tracks the greenhouse gas most responsible for climate change.
How it's made. Built from the Japanese GOSAT satellite's CO2 readings, which are bias-corrected and then smoothly interpolated to fill in a continuous gridded map.
How & where you'd use it. Helpful for following how CO2 builds up and shifts around the planet over time, and for comparing against climate models and emissions estimates.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2014-09-07 → 2020-06-28
- Measured byGOSAT (TANSO-FTS)
- Processing levelLevel 4
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- StatusCOMPLETE
What you can do with it
- Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
- Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
- Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description
Gridded carbon dioxide mole fraction (XCO2) and other select variables created by applying local kriging (also known as optimal interpolation) to daily aggregates of Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) bias corrected data. This is the latest version of this collection.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="ACOSMonthlyGriddedXCO2",
version="3",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from GES_DISC Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Access the data via HTTPS. GET DATA
- Access the data via the OPeNDAP protocol. USE SERVICE API
- Use the Earthdata Search to find and retrieve data sets across multiple data centers. GET DATA
- MEASURES 2017 XCO2 Data Fusion Data User’s Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- MEASURES 2017 XCO2 Data Fusion Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document VIEW RELATED INFORMATION