OCO-3 Level 2 geolocated XCO2 retrievals results, physical model, Forward Processing V11 (OCO3_L2_Standard)

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 Older versions will no longer be available and are superseded by Version 11.

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 August 10, 2026, 23:24 (UTC)
Created March 10, 2026, 03:01 (UTC)
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