OCO-2: Satellite-Based Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Measurements

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) is the agency's first mission dedicated to precise, high-resolution space-based measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The dataset provides column-averaged CO2 dry air mole fraction (XCO2) retrievals from three onboard spectrometers measuring reflected sunlight at specific near-infrared wavelengths. These geolocated results are designed to characterize the processes controlling the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Use Cases

• Tracking regional and global carbon dioxide fluxes based on column-averaged XCO2 measurements.
• Validating and improving terrestrial and atmospheric carbon cycle models using satellite-derived CO2 concentrations.
• Analyzing seasonal and long-term trends in atmospheric CO2 from the time-series of geolocated retrievals.
• Studying the spectral signature of CO2 and O2 using data from the three high-resolution spectrometers.

Strengths

• Data is from a dedicated NASA satellite mission designed for high-precision CO2 measurement.
• The dataset represents the current, authoritative version (11.2), superseding all older releases.
• Measurements are derived from three coincident spectrometers, suggesting a multi-band retrieval approach.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing or conflicting across platforms: row count, size, and specific column names are unknown.
• The license is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without clear terms.
• Documentation appears limited to the algorithm output description, with no detailed data dictionary provided.

Provenance

Source

NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC)

Collection Method

Retrieval algorithm output from spectra collected by the OCO-2 satellite's instrument.

Time Range

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Freshness

Last updated: 2026-04 09 23:33:31.816119

Geography

Global, from satellite orbits.