Satellite Observations of CO2 and CH4 Supported from NASA GSFC

The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) archives and distributes pioneering collections of data on atmospheric greenhouse gases from a number of satellites. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) has made tropospheric observations of ozone, water vapor, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane for over a decade. In preparation for the second Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2), the GES DISC in collaboration with JPL released the Atmospheric CO2 Observations from Space (ACOS) product which is derived from radiances observed by the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT). Most recently, the successful launch and operations of the OCO-2 solidified the opportunities for increasingly accurate new collections of global CO2 observations freely available to the public. Our presentation provides a guide toward the AIRS, ACOS, and OCO-2 data collections of atmospheric carbon, methane data, and related data. We will summarize available formats, resolutions, coverage, as well as various routes to the data, that serve different needs for data scouting and download. We will also describe how to perform spatial, event, and OpenLayers searches, and how to create custom subsets of variables. Subtle differences in the physics of the CO2 observations from AIRS and OCO-2, frequently escaping the attention of users, will be emphasized. We will also give some examples of data content and applicability using popular cases and a demonstration of what can be expected from comparisons of observations from multiple satellites and model data.