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Full catalog/OCO3_L1aAE
OCO3_L1aAE·v11·dataset

Where the satellite was pointing each day (OCO-3, forward)

OCO-3 Instrument Attitude and Ephemeris Data for One Specific Solar Day, Forward Processing V11 (OCO3_L1aAE) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 1A active
In plain English

What it measures. Records of exactly where the OCO-3 instrument was positioned and pointing over the course of a single day, including the spacecraft's location and orientation.

How it's made. Built from depacketized raw instrument data plus calibrated engineering data from OCO-3 on the International Space Station, in a forward (near-real-time) processing stream that feeds the next processing stage.

How & where you'd use it. A low-level building-block input used to turn raw OCO-3 spectra into usable carbon dioxide measurements; almost everyone uses it indirectly through higher-level products.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › CARBON AND HYDROCARBON COMPOUNDS › ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDESPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › INFRARED RADIANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2014-07-03 → ongoing
  • Measured byOCO-3 (OCO-3)
  • Processing levelLevel 1A
  • 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 is the current version of the data set. Older versions will no longer be available and are superseded by Version 11. 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-3 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. The three spectrometers have different characteristics and are calibrated independently. Their raw data numbers (DN) are delivered correlated in time to the Level 1B process as Level 1A products. Each band has 1016 spectral elements, although some are masked out in the L2 retrieval.This product is the input to the Level 1B process. It is depacketized raw data formatted into a standard granularity with calibrated engineering data (for both science and calibration observations), in the Sample Mode of operation.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

oco3_l1aae_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="OCO3_L1aAE",
    version="11",
    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.