OCO-2 Level 2: Atmospheric CO2 Prior Estimates from Satellite Spectrometry
Updated 2mo ago
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Available on 2 platforms
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Description
NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) mission provides global, space-based measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The dataset incorporates prior estimates based on monthly flask records, global meteorology, and age of air, processed by three high-resolution spectrometers measuring reflected sunlight at specific near-infrared wavelengths. Version 10r represents the current, corrected data product, addressing a known geolocation error for observations from January 28 to December 31, 2020.
Use Cases
Characterizing global carbon dioxide buildup and controlling processes based on precision satellite measurements.
Validating and improving atmospheric transport models using prior estimates derived from flask records and meteorology.
Analyzing spatial and temporal trends in CO2 concentrations from geospatial, time-series satellite data.
Assessing the impact of geolocation corrections on Level 2 data products for a specific time period.
Strengths
Data is from the first NASA mission specifically designed for space-based atmospheric CO2 measurements with required precision and coverage.
Includes corrected and replaced data for a critical period (January 28 - December 31, 2020) due to a ~300 meter pointing error, enhancing accuracy.
Measurements are derived from three coincident, high-resolution spectrometers targeting specific CO2 and O2 absorption bands.
Limitations
Column names and detailed schema are unknown, limiting precise understanding of data structure.
Conflicting 'last updated' dates (2026-04-09 and 2022-03-01) across platforms create uncertainty about metadata freshness.
Exact dataset size, row count, and spatial/temporal resolution are not provided in the available metadata.
Provenance
Source
NASA OCO-2 mission, processed and distributed by GES DISC.
Collection Method
Satellite-based spectrometry from the LEOStar-2 spacecraft, using retrospective processing (V10r).
Time Range
Includes data from at least January 28, 2020 onward; specific start and end dates are not provided.
License is listed as 'other-license-specified'; users must review specific terms. Older data versions are superseded by Version 10r and are no longer available.