OCO-3 Level 1B calibrated, geolocated science spectra, Retrospective Processing V11r (OCO3_L1B_Science) at GES DISC

Version 11r is the current version of the data set. Older versions will no longer be available and are superseded by Version 11r.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory -3 (OCO-3) was deployed to the International Space Station in May, 2019. It is technically a single instrument, almost identical to OCO-2.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory is the first NASA mission designed to collect space-based measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide with the precision, resolution, and coverage needed to characterize the processes controlling its buildup in the atmosphere.

OCO-3 incorporates three high-resolution spectrometers that make coincident measurements of reflected sunlight in the near-infrared CO2 near 1.61 and 2.06 micrometers and in molecular oxygen (O2) A-Band at 0.76 micrometers. The three spectrometers have different characteristics and are calibrated independently.

Oxygen-A Band cloud screening algorithm is one of the primary cloud screening tools implemented in the operational OCO processing pipeline. The algorithm was introduced and applied to early GOSAT data with further analysis performed on OCO-2 simulations.

The OCO ABO2 algorithm employs a fast Bayesian retrieval to estimate surface pressure and surface albedo from high resolution spectra of the molecular oxygen (O2) A-band, near 0.765 µm. The radiative transfer forward model (FM) assumes a clear-sky condition, i.e. Rayleigh scattering only, such that differences between the modeled and measured radiances are apparent when the measurement scene contains cloud or aerosol.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field	Value
Maintainer	Earthdata Forum
Last Updated	June 23, 2026, 03:24 (UTC)
Created	April 1, 2025, 18:14 (UTC)
accessLevel	public
bureauCode	{026:00}
catalog_conformsTo	https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id	29eb16a3-fe06-4607-ac7b-3a82a30c896e
harvest_source_id	b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title	Science Discovery Engine
identifier	10.5067/RMPCRNS60ICX
license	https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified	2026-06-15T22:16:03Z
programCode	{026:000}
publisher	NASA/GSFC/SED/ESD/TISL/GESDISC
resource-type	Dataset
source_datajson_identifier	true
source_hash	ad5bf514771fc226635474983f5b07eb3f13716d4d4085e83278940a58c69c1d
source_schema_version	1.1
spatial	["GEODETIC", [{"WestBoundingCoordinate": -180, "NorthBoundingCoordinate": 90, "EastBoundingCoordinate": 180, "SouthBoundingCoordinate": -90}]]
temporal	2019-08-06/2026-06-15
theme	{"Earth Science"}