This paper presents a first quantitative and systematic analysis of one year of SCIAMACHY Carbon Monoxide (CO) total column retrievals from the IMLM algorithm (v6.3) using a chemistry-transport model simulation. The global distribution of modeled and measured CO show similar spatial patterns: a north-south gradient, low CO over mountains, and high CO over emission regions. CO column errors due to instrument noise are closely related to surface albedo and are less than 6% for monthly means at high surface albedo locations, improving to ∼1% for ideal circumstances: cloud-free pixels, high surface albedo, and spatial averaging (3° × 2°). Quantitative comparison shows that measured and modeled seasonality agree very well at several locations with different types of seasonal cycles. Differences between SCIAMACHY CO and model results are less than 13% except for regions with large instrument-noise errors. Differences larger than the 2σ instrument-noise error (95% confidence interval) occur in some regions with small noise errors, for example southern Africa. In this case the SCIAMACHY CO variations are different from the model biomass-burning emission seasonal cycle and more in agreement with observed fire count seasonality. The comparison with model results indicates that despite unforeseen time-dependent instrument-calibration complications, SCIAMACHY CO total column retrievals are of sufficient quality to provide useful new information on the global distribution and variation of CO.