Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT)

The MOPITT Experiment

MOPITT is an instrument flying aboard NASA's Terra satellite, which was launched in December, 1999. MOPITT collected data from March 3, 2000 through January 31, 2025.

• Overview
• Timeline of the instrument's performance
• Historical account of the mission
• The MOPITT Team

How MOPITT Works

MOPITT is a correlated radiometer that retrieves profiles and total column CO.

• Instrument Concepts.
• Retrieval Algorithm.

The Data

The permanent archive of MOPITT data is ASDC. Data is accessible:

• by direct download
• through Earthdata Search
• NSF NCAR Repository (Coming Soon)
• V10 L2 File Spec

Details

• About the Versions
• Here are some tools for reading HDF-EOS files.

MOPITT retrievals of carbon monoxide vertical profiles and total column are available for the period starting March 3, 2000 and continuing to the present. 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.

Documentation

For each release there is a user's guide and data quality statement.

User Guides

• V9 Users Guide
• V8 Users Guide
• V7 Users Guide
• V6 Users Guide
• V5 Users Guide
• V4 Users Guide

Data Quality Statements

• V9 Level 2 Data Quality Statement
• V9 Level 3 Data Quality Statement
• V8 Level 2 Data Quality Statement
• V8 Level 3 Data Quality Statement
• Errata
• Other Versions

Algorithm Theoretical Basis Documents (ATBD)

• Level 1 ATBD
• Level 2 ATBD

Publications

Here are some of the scientific publications that are based on the analysis of MOPITT data.

Refereed Articles	Bibliography	With Abstracts
Articles with Team Member Authors	Bibliography	With Abstracts
Theses	Bibliography	With Abstracts
Non-Refereed Articles	Bibliography	With Abstracts