How to determine area of pixel in meters with GDAL and Python?

Question

I have a raster loaded in Python using GDAL bindings. I'd like to be able to determine the area of a pixel in meters although I'm not confident that the projection is in meters. On this page I see a reference to OGRSpatialReference::GetLinearUnits(), but no corresponding Python bindings.

Any suggestions on how I can determine the are of a pixel in meters?

EDIT: Here's an example of how to get at the linear units:

srs = osr.SpatialReference()
srs.SetProjection(dataset.GetProjection())
print srs.GetLinearUnitsName(), srs.GetLinearUnits()

Answer 1

Its definitely in there, I'm guessing its an oversight in the docs. From osr.py:

    def GetLinearUnits(self, *args):
      """GetLinearUnits(self) -> double"""
      return _osr.SpatialReference_GetLinearUnits(self, *args)