NASA Maps Shed Light on Carbon Dioxide's Global Nature

A NASA/university team has published the first global satellite maps of the key greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in Earth's mid-troposphere, an area about 8 kilometers, or 5 miles, above Earth. The team's study reveals new information on how carbon dioxide, which directly contributes to climate change, is distributed in Earth's atmosphere and moves around our world.

The results provide the means to understand the sources and sinks and the lifting of CO2 from surface layers into the free troposphere and its subsequent transport around the globe. These processes are not adequately represented in three chemistry- transport models that have been used to study carbon budgets.