The measurement of air pollution from satellites (MAPS) experiment measured the distribution of middle tropospheric carbon monoxide (CO) from the space shuttle during October 1984. A critical area of the experiment is the assessment of experimental error of the MAPS data. This error is determined by the comparison between the space-based CO data and concurrent, direct CO measurements taken aboard aircraft. Because of the variability in the CO measurements near land sources, a strategy for comparing the tropospheric CO measurements over the remote oceans is presented.