Summary

Every day, two NASA space instruments known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 and -3 (OCO-2 and OCO-3) capture more than a million observations of sunlight reflecting off Earth's surface. Using the physics of how light travels through the air, an algorithm converts these raw data into atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations. For more than a decade , these space-based CO₂ measurements have helped to fill gaps in knowledge about Earth's carbon cycle—how carbon moves between different reservoirs—on scales ranging from individual cities to the entire globe.

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