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Full catalog/ML3DZCO
ML3DZCO·v005·dataset

Carbon monoxide gas by latitude, daily (Aura)

MLS/Aura Level 3 Daily Binned Carbon Monoxide (CO) Mixing Ratio on Zonal and Similar Grids V005 (ML3DZCO) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 3 active
In plain English

What it measures. Daily amounts of carbon monoxide gas in the atmosphere, organized by latitude band and altitude. Carbon monoxide is a useful tracer for tracking how air moves and where pollution and burning occur.

How it's made. Derived from microwave signals measured by the Microwave Limb Sounder on NASA's Aura satellite, then binned by latitude and height.

How & where you'd use it. Helps researchers follow the movement of air in the upper atmosphere and study the spread of pollution and smoke.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › CARBON AND HYDROCARBON COMPOUNDS › ATMOSPHERIC CARBON MONOXIDE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2004-08-02 → ongoing
  • Measured byAura (MLS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -82, 180, 82
  • StatusACTIVE

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

ML3DZCO is the EOS Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) daily binned on zonal and assorted vertical grids product for carbon monoxide (CO) derived from radiances measured by the 640 GHz radiometer. The data version is 5.1. Data coverage is from August 2, 2005 to current. Spatial coverage is near-global (-82 to +82 degrees latitude) at 4 degree latitude zonal increments. The recommended useful vertical range is between 215 and 0.00464 hPa, and the vertical resolution is about 6 km. Users of the ML3DZCO data product should read chapter 4 and section 3.7 of the EOS MLS Level 2 Version 5 Quality Document for more information. The data files contain one year of data and are archived in the netCDF4 format, which is also compatible with HDF5 readers and tools. Each file contains four group objects: lat vs pressure zonal mean, lat vs "potential temperature" zonal mean, "equivalent latitude" vs "potential temperature" zonal mean, and vortex average vs "potential temperature". Each group has a set of data (average, min, max, std dev, rms) and geolocation fields, grid attributes, and metadata.

Get the data

ml3dzco_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ML3DZCO",
    version="005",
    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.