The atmospheric CO2 growth rate is a fundamental measure of climate forcing. NOAA's annual growth rate estimates, derived from in situ observations at the marine boundary layer (MBL), serve as the benchmark in policy and science. However, NOAA's MBL-based method encounters challenges in accurately estimating the whole-atmosphere CO2 growth rate at sub-annual scales. We introduce the Growth Rate from Satellite Observations (GRESO) method as a complementary approach to estimate the whole-atmosphere CO2 growth rate utilizing satellite data. Satellite CO2 observations offer extensive atmospheric coverage that extends the capability of the current NOAA benchmark. We assess the sampling errors of the GRESO and NOAA methods using ten atmospheric transport model simulations. The simulations generate synthetic OCO-2 satellite and NOAA MBL data for calculating CO2 growth rates, which are compared against the global sum of carbon fluxes used as model inputs. We find good performance for the NOAA method (R = 0.93, RMSE = 0.12 ppm/year or 0.25 PgC/year). GRESO demonstrates lower sampling errors (R = 1.00; RMSE = 0.04 ppm/year or 0.09 PgC/year). Additionally, GRESO shows better performance at monthly scales than NOAA (R = 0.77 vs 0.47, respectively). Due to CO2's atmospheric longevity, the NOAA method accurately captures growth rates over five-year intervals. GRESO's robustness across partial coverage configurations (ocean or land data) shows that satellites can be promising tools for low-latency CO2 growth rate information, provided the systematic biases are minimized using in situ observations. Along with accurate and calibrated NOAA in situ data, satellite-derived growth rates can provide information about the global carbon cycle at sub-annual scales.