A decade of carbon dioxide data from space gets an upgrade

illuminem summarises for you the essential news of the day, reviewed by our editorial team. Read the full piece on Phys.org or enjoy below:

🗞️ Driving the news: NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellites have produced an improved global record of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂), covering September 2014 to the present
• The updated dataset offers more accurate measurements, helping scientists track changes in atmospheric CO₂ and better understand the global carbon cycle

🔭 The context: The OCO-2 satellite, launched in 2014, and OCO-3, installed on the International Space Station in 2019, collect more than one million observations of reflected sunlight every day
• Researchers have refined the algorithms used to convert these observations into CO₂ concentrations, improving instrument calibration and accounting for factors such as clouds, aerosols and ocean reflectivity
• The resulting record aligns more closely with precise ground-based measurements, while the two satellites also show strong agreement with each other

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: More reliable CO₂ data can help scientists understand how carbon moves between the atmosphere and other parts of the Earth system, including how wildfires, droughts and El Niño affect emissions and absorption
• Monthly monitoring could also help assess whether climate policies are delivering measurable results

⏭️ What’s next: The improved dataset is publicly available and provides researchers with a record spanning more than a decade
• Its higher consistency and monthly resolution could support closer monitoring of carbon-cycle changes and their response to extreme events

📈 One stat: More than 1 million observations per day — the combined daily observations of reflected sunlight collected by NASA’s OCO-2 and OCO-3 instruments

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