Advances in Observations From AIRS and ACOS

NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) archives and distributes pioneering collections of data on atmospheric greenhouse gases. In September of 2012, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) marked a decade of tropospheric observations of carbon dioxide (CO₂). Most recently, the Atmospheric CO₂ Observations from Space (ACOS) project and GES DISC released CO₂ retrievals derived from radiances observed by the Japanese Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) satellite, launched in 2009. In this letter, we present the most recent estimates of decadal mid-tropospheric trends of CO₂ from AIRS, as well as the most recent status of the total column-average distribution of CO₂ from ACOS. We also demonstrate that significant discrepancies still exist in the global distribution of observed and modeled column amounts of CO₂ using the CO₂ retrievals from the ACOS project.