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OCO3_L2_Standard·v11r·dataset

Carbon dioxide in the air (OCO-3)

OCO-3 Level 2 geolocated XCO2 retrievals results, physical model, Retrospective Processing V11r (OCO3_L2_Standard) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2 active
In plain English

What it measures. The amount of carbon dioxide in a column of air, pinpointed to specific locations, measured by reading how sunlight is absorbed by CO2 and oxygen.

How it's made. Produced from the OCO-3 instrument on the International Space Station, which uses three high-resolution light analyzers; the readings are processed through a physics-based retrieval to estimate CO2.

How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists map where carbon dioxide builds up and study the natural and human processes that control it in the atmosphere.

What's measured

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

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2019-08-06 → ongoing
  • Measured byISS (OCO-3)
  • 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 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 Older versions will no longer be available and are superseded by Version 11r.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 -3 (OCO-3) was deployed to the International Space Station in May, 2019. It is technically a single instrument, almost identical to OCO-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. OCO-3 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. Oxygen-A Band cloud screening algorithm is one of the primary cloud screening tools implemented in the operational OCO processing pipeline. The algorithm was introduced and applied to early GOSAT data with further analysis performed on OCO-2 simulations. The OCO ABO2 algorithm employs a fast Bayesian retrieval to estimate surface pressure and surface albedo from high resolution spectra of the molecular oxygen (O2) A-band, near 0.765 µm. The radiative transfer forward model (FM) assumes a clear-sky condition, i.e. Rayleigh scattering only, such that differences between the modeled and measured radiances are apparent when the measurement scene contains cloud or aerosol.

Get the data

oco3_l2_standard_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="OCO3_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.