ACT-America: L1 Raw, Uncalibrated In-Situ CO2, CO, and CH4 Mole Fractions from Towers

This dataset provides Level 1 (L1) in situ atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and methane (CH4) concentrations as measured on a network of instrumented communications towers across the central and eastern USA operated by the Atmospheric Carbon and Transport-America (ACT-America) project. There were 11 towers instrumented with cavity ring-down spectrometers (CRDS; Picarro Inc.) with measurements beginning in January 2015 and continuing to October 2019. The measurement period varied by tower site. The Picarro analyzers continuously measured total CH4, isotopic ratio of CH4, CO2, CO, and other greenhouse gas concentrations. Not all species were measured at all sites. Complete tower location, elevation, instrument height, and date/time information are also provided. Determination of greenhouse gas fluxes and uncertainty bounds is essential for the evaluation of the effectiveness of mitigation strategies. These L1 data are raw instrument outputs from the Picarro instruments. A Level 2 (L2) product derived from this L1 data is available and generally would be the preferred data for most use cases.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated February 17, 2026, 00:49 (UTC)
Created April 1, 2025, 14:10 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id bc66bd71-4f23-4881-a64d-bba26da2689a
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1798
landingPage https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/search?q=Insitu_Tower_Greenhouse_Gas_1798&ac=true
modified 2026-02-16
programCode {026:000}
publisher ORNL_DAAC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash bdf22308e5d3452d0895ecaf5636e9c3421105af908ae5e0f5af32c1fc903fee
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial [[{"WestBoundingCoordinate":-98.588,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":44.0502,"EastBoundingCoordinate":-76.4188,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":30.1951}],"CARTESIAN"]
temporal 2015-01-01/2015-01-01
theme {"Earth Science"}