MOPITT measurements provide vertical profiles and total column CO and are useful to analyze the distribution, transport, sources and sinks of CO on a global level.
MOPITT retrievals of CO are publicly available for the period starting March 3, 2000 and continuing to the present.
The current variants of MOPITT CO retrievals (Level 2 and Level 3 products) are:
- TIR: thermal infrared-only (TIR-only, band near 4.7 μm) product
- NIR: near infrared-only (NIR-only, band near 2.3 μm) product
- TIR+NIR: joint or multispectral TIR and NIR product
The MOPITT version V3 product (now outdated) was the first satellite data set for tropospheric CO observation and its characteristics is covered in a paper by Deeter et. al., 2003.
All MOPITT data versions prior to V7 are now outdated and no longer publicly available.
The V7 dataset covers the period 2000 - 2020, V8 covers 2000 - 2022, and V9 from 2000 - 2025. V7 data was validated in Deeter et al., 2017, V8 was validated in Deeter et al., 2019, and V9 was validated in Deeter et al., 2021. These references also summarize the changes made in each data version.
User guides and data quality statements can be found at Data Documentation.
There is no operational MOPITT product for methane, due to a variety of problems with the methane-channel radiances. Some of these issues are documented in the 2005 paper "Effects of a spectral surface reflectance on measurements of backscattered solar radiation: Application to the MOPITT methane retrieval" by Pfister et al.
| Version | Variants | Operational Period | CO A Priori | Meteorological model | CO state vector | N retrieval levels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| V3 | TIR | 2003-2009 | Global | NCEP | VMR | 7 |
| V4 | TIR | 2009-2012 | MOZART | NCEP | log(VMR) | 10 |
| V5 | TIR, NIR, TIR+NIR | 2011-2016 | MOZART | NCEP | log(VMR) | 10 |
| V6 | TIR, NIR, TIR+NIR | 2013-2017 | CAM-Chem | MERRA | log(VMR) | 10 |
| V7 | TIR, NIR, TIR+NIR | 2016-2019 | CAM-Chem | MERRA-2 | log(VMR) | 10 |
| V8 | TIR, NIR, TIR+NIR | 2018-2022 | CAM-Chem | MERRA-2 | log(VMR) | 10 |
| V8 beta | TIR, NIR, TIR+NIR | 2018-2022 | CAM-Chem | MERRA-2 | log(VMR) | 10 |
| V9 | TIR, NIR, TIR+NIR | 2021-2025 | CAM-Chem | MERRA-2 | log(VMR) | 10 |
| V9 beta | TIR, NIR, TIR+NIR | 2021-2025 | CAM-Chem | MERRA-2 | log(VMR) | 10 |
| NRT | TIR | 2021-2025 | - | - | log(VMR) | 10 |
In May 2001, one of MOPITT's two coolers failed, effectively disabling channels 1 - 4. After extensive diagnostics and some minor reconfiguration of the Channel 7 PMC, MOPITT resumed operations in August, 2001 with channels 5 - 8 fully functional and the cooler operating in an unbalanced mode. No MOPITT products are available for the period between 7 May and 24 August 2001. The retrievals are divided into:
"Phase-I" CO Retrievals (March 2000 - May 2001) and "Phase-II" CO Retrievals (August 2001 - February 2025).
Phase I and Phase II CO retrievals are similar in terms of vertical resolution and information content.
Where to find the data?
The NCAR interactive data viewer can be accessed at: https://www.acom.ucar.edu/mopitt/webview/plot-options.shtml
The permanent archive of MOPITT data (in .he5 format) can be accessed on the NASA ASDC earth data website: https://asdc.larc.nasa.gov/project/MOPITT
Data can also be accessed by direct download here, through Earthdata Search here, or through the NSF NCAR Repository here.
To view the .he5 data you can use the NASA tool Panoply, which can be accessed for download at: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply/download/
Additional tools for handling HDF/HDF-EOS files using Python, NCL, MATLAB, and IDL can be found at: https://hdfeos.org/zoo/
A useful tool is GIOVANNI where you can access the data for several species as well as several instruments and plot the data. You can access MOPITT data by selecting CO and MOPITT from the drop down lists.
Another useful tool is the NASA WorldView tool where you can add layers of different data from different instruments and plot the data for different dates.