AIRS/Aqua L3 Monthly CO2 in the free troposphere (AIRS-only) 2.5 degrees x 2 degrees V005 (AIRS3C2M) at GES DISC

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) is a grating spectrometer (R = 1200) aboard the second Earth Observing System (EOS) polar-orbiting platform, EOS Aqua. In combination with the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) and the Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB), AIRS constitutes an innovative atmospheric sounding group of visible, infrared, and microwave sensors. This product is the AIRS mid-tropospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Level 3 Monthly Gridded Retrieval, from the AIRS instrument on board of Aqua satellite. It is a monthly gridded data, at 2.5x2 deg (lon)x(lat) grid cell size. The data is in mole fraction units (data x 10^6 =ppm in volume). This quantity is not a total column quantity because the sensitivity function of the AIRS mid-tropospheric CO2 retrieval system peaks over the altitude range 6-10 km. The quantity is what results when the true atmospheric CO2 profile is weighted, level-by-level, by the AIRS sensitivity function. The file format is HDF-EOS 2.12 corresponding to HDF4. This AIRS mid-tropospheric CO2 Level 3 Monthly Gridded Retrieval Product contains standard retrieval means, standard deviations and input counts as well as the latitude and longitude arrays giving the centers of the grid boxes. Each file covers a calendar month. The mean values are simply the arithmetic means of the individual CO2 retrievals which fall within that grid box over the month. The mid-tropospheric CO2 retrievals have been averaged and binned into 2.5 degree longitude x 2 degree latitude grid cells, from -180.0 to +180.0 deg longitude and from -60.0 to +90.0 deg latitude. For each grid map of 4-byte floating-point mean values there is a corresponding 4-byte floating-point map of standard deviation and a 2-byte integer grid map of counts. The counts map provides the user with the number of points per bin that were included in the mean.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated June 15, 2026, 22:09 (UTC)
Created April 1, 2025, 14:18 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id 7a05f152-cd61-4e4c-8ce9-a20bc392120b
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.5067/Aqua/AIRS/DATA336
license https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified 2026-06-08T22:16:01Z
programCode {026:000}
publisher NASA/GSFC/SED/ESD/TISL/GESDISC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash df6de01b35f4cfa66f4dc5266723b65196052bfa69c2117364fb080d810dd247
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial ["CARTESIAN", [{"WestBoundingCoordinate": -180, "NorthBoundingCoordinate": 90, "EastBoundingCoordinate": 180, "SouthBoundingCoordinate": -60}]]
temporal 2010-01-01/2017-02-28
theme {"Earth Science"}