OCO-3 Level 1B calibrated, geolocated calibration spectra, Forward Processing V11 (OCO3_L1B_Calibration) at GES DISC

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 Older versions will no longer be available and are superseded by Version 11.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.

The 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. Their raw data numbers (DN) are delivered correlated in time to the Level 1B process as Level 1A products. Each band has 1016 spectralelements, although some are masked out in the L2 retrieval.

This L1B product results from calibration mode measurements (e.g., Lunar,Solar, Dark observations), and thus it differs from the OCO3_L1B_Science (L1bSc) product. The differences in the product formats are only in the geolocation information provided. Whereas the L1bSc products report geolocation data for each sounding, calibration products report the direction of the boresight vector.