AIRS Satellite Daily Mid-Tropospheric Carbon Dioxide Gridded Data

Satellite-derived mid-tropospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are provided as daily gridded retrievals from the AIRS and AMSU instruments aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The data consists of arithmetic mean values, standard deviations, and input counts for each 2.5 by 2 degree latitude-longitude grid cell, covering latitudes from -60 to +90 degrees. This Level 3 product is generated by NASA's Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC).

Use Cases

• Analyzing spatial patterns of atmospheric CO2 using the gridded mean values and longitude/latitude arrays.
• Assessing retrieval uncertainty for climate models via the accompanying standard deviation maps per grid cell.
• Evaluating data density and sampling for statistical studies using the integer counts map of points per bin.
• Tracking daily variations in total tropospheric column CO2 mole fraction across the covered geographic region.

Strengths

• Data provides three key metrics per grid cell: mean, standard deviation, and count, enabling statistical analysis.
• Coverage spans a wide geographic range from -180 to +180 degrees longitude and -60 to +90 degrees latitude.
• Retrievals are from a well-characterized instrument suite (AIRS, AMSU) on a dedicated Earth observation platform (Aqua).

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable across all sources.
• Sources conflict on license information: one lists 'other-license-specified' while others list it as unknown.
• The last updated date shows a significant conflict, with one source listing 2012 and another listing a future date (2026).

Provenance

Source

GES_DISC

Collection Method

Retrievals from the AIRS and AMSU instruments on the Aqua satellite, averaged and binned into daily global grids.

Time Range

Each file covers a 24-hour period.

Freshness

2012-02-29 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Global coverage from -180.0 to +180.0 deg longitude and -60.0 to +90.0 deg latitude.