Data products
Methane
DESCRIPTION
Methane (CH4) is, after carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important contributor to the anthropogenically enhanced greenhouse effect. Roughly three-quarters of methane emissions are anthropogenic and as such it is important to continue the record of satellite based measurements. TROPOMI aims at providing CH4 column concentrations with high sensitivity to the Earth’s surface, good spatiotemporal coverage, and sufficient accuracy to facilitate inverse modeling of sources and sinks. TROPOMI uses absorption information from the Oxygen-A Band (760nm) and the SWIR spectral range to monitor CH4 abundances in the Earth’s atmosphere. Data from the GOSAT satellite instrument and ground-based TCCON instruments are used for verification and validation. With the most recent algortihm update, methane which was previously a land-only data product, now includes pixels with sun glint over parts of the ocean. Methane data is available in the OFFL data stream. Here below is an image of the monthly average methane from January 2022 including the ocean glint retrieval.
| Version number | Version Effective Orbit Number and Date | Summary of changes |
|---|---|---|
| 2.04.00 | OFFL: orbit 24655, 2022-07-17 | Current version; Updated L1b |
| 2.03.01 | OFFL: orbit 21188, 2021-11-14 | Current version; retrieval over ocean glint areas |
| 2.02.00 | OFFL: orbit 19258, 2021-07-01 | Updated L1b and algorithm, see PRF |
USER DOCUMENTATION: ATBD, PUM, & README
Links to the Product Readme File (PRF), the Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD) and the Product User Manual (PUM) are located on the right of this page under Documentation. This data product is available only in the OFFL and RPRO data streams, the data was first released in November 2018 and is available via the Copernicus Open Data Access Hub (see link on right).