Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/OCO2_L2_Standard
OCO2_L2_Standard·v11.2·dataset

Carbon dioxide in the air (OCO-2, full physics)

OCO-2 Level 2 geolocated XCO2 retrievals results, physical model V11.2 (OCO2_L2_Standard) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2 active
In plain English

What it measures. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the air, expressed as a column-averaged amount, along with related quantities, measured precisely enough to study how CO2 builds up in the atmosphere.

How it's made. Retrieved by NASA's OCO-2 satellite, which uses three spectrometers to read reflected sunlight in specific infrared bands, run through a detailed physics-based algorithm to extract the CO2 amount.

How & where you'd use it. Central to studying the carbon cycle, tracking sources and sinks of CO2, and understanding the processes that govern greenhouse gas levels.

What's measured

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

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2019-11-30 → ongoing
  • Measured byOCO-2 (OCO-2)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • 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

Version 11.2 is the current version of the data set. Older versions will no longer be available and are superseded by Version 11.2. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory is the first NASA mission designed to collect space-based measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide with the precision, resolution, and coverage needed to characterize the processes controlling its buildup in the atmosphere. The OCO-2 project uses the LEOStar-2 spacecraft that carries a single instrument. It incorporates three high-resolution spectrometers that make coincident measurements of reflected sunlight in the near-infrared CO2 near 1.61 and 2.06 micrometers and in molecular oxygen (O2) A-Band at 0.76 micrometers. This collection is the output from the algorithm retrieving the column-averaged CO2 dry air mole fraction XCO2 and other quantities from the spectra collected by the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2).

Get the data

oco2_l2_standard_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="OCO2_L2_Standard",
    version="11.2",
    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.