OCO-2 Level 1B: Calibrated Science Spectra for Atmospheric CO2

Retrospective processing version 11r provides calibrated radiances and geolocation from the OCO-2 satellite's three high-resolution spectrometers. The data converts raw instrument measurements into calibrated radiances for the near-infrared CO2 bands at 1.61 and 2.06 micrometers and the molecular oxygen A-Band at 0.76 micrometers. This dataset supports the characterization of processes controlling atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup.

Use Cases

• Calibrating atmospheric carbon dioxide retrieval algorithms based on the three spectrometer bands.
• Analyzing spatial and temporal trends in CO2 concentrations using the geolocated measurement data.
• Validating and improving climate models with precise, space-based measurements of atmospheric constituents.
• Studying the spectral characteristics of reflected sunlight in specific near-infrared and oxygen A-Band wavelengths.

Strengths

• Uses retrospective processing (V11r) where calibration is estimated from the full data timeseries, which is noted to be of slightly higher quality.
• Provides measurements from three independent, high-resolution spectrometers, each with 1016 spectral elements per band.
• Dataset is hosted on multiple authoritative platforms (NASA Earthdata, Data.gov), indicating its importance and curation.

Limitations

• Column names and specific data structure are not provided in the available metadata, limiting immediate usability.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between sources (2026-04-09 and 2024-04-01), creating uncertainty about freshness.
• Key quantitative metadata such as row count, file size, and precise temporal coverage are absent.

Provenance

Source

NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) mission, processed by the GES DISC.

Collection Method

Space-based measurements from the LEOStar-2 spacecraft's single instrument, incorporating three spectrometers. Data is processed through the Level 1B algorithm.

Time Range

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Freshness

2026-04 09 23:21:41.133418

Geography

Global coverage from satellite observations.