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OCO2_L2_Standard·v11r·dataset

Carbon dioxide in the air (OCO-2)

OCO-2 Level 2 geolocated XCO2 retrievals results, physical model, Retrospective Processing V11r (OCO2_L2_Standard) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2
In plain English

What it measures. Gives the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air, measured as a whole column from the ground up to space and reported for specific spots the satellite passed over. It's the actual amount of CO2, the main heat-trapping gas humans add to the atmosphere.

How it's made. NASA's OCO-2 satellite measures sunlight reflected off Earth in specific colors that CO2 and oxygen absorb, then an algorithm works backward from those spectra to calculate the CO2 amount; this version is reprocessed for slightly higher quality.

How & where you'd use it. Scientists use it to track where carbon dioxide builds up and where forests and oceans absorb it, helping them understand the carbon cycle and human emissions over time.

What's measured

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

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2014-09-01 → 2024-04-01
  • Measured byOCO-2 (OCO-2)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • 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

Version 11r is the current version of the data set. Older versions will no longer be available and are superseded by Version 11r. 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). This is the retrospective processing where the calibration data is estimated from the full timeseries of data (before, during, and after the measurements), and is expected to be of slightly higher quality.

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="11r",
    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.