IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2014 - 52

B. GCOM-W
The GCOM-W mission aims to establish the global and
long-term observation system to collect data, which is
needed to understand mechanisms of climate and water
ThE GCOM-W MISSION
cycle variations, and demonaIMS TO ESTabLISh ThE
strate its utilization (Fig. 5,
right,
and Figure 6). AMSR2
GLObaL aNd LONG-TERM
onboard
the first generation
ObSERVaTION SySTEM TO
of
the
GCOM-W
series conCOLLECT daTa, WhICh IS
tinues Aqua/AMSR-E obserNEEdEd TO UNdERSTaNd
vations of water vapor, cloud
MEChaNISMS OF CLIMaTE
liquid water, precipitation,
aNd WaTER CyCLE
SST, sea surface wind speed,
VaRIaTIONS, aNd
sea ice concentration, snow
dEMONSTRaTE ITS
depth, and soil moisture.
The GCOM-W1 satellite was
UTILIzaTION.
launched on May 18, 2012
(Japan Standard Time) [8],
[9]. EORC established the web for the GCOM-W researches.
C. GOSAT
The Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT)
Project is a joint effort promoted by the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency (JAXA), the National Institute for
Environmental Studies (NIES) and the Ministry of the
Environment (MOE). NIES organized the research team
dedicated to the GOSAT project within its organization
in April 2004, and since then it has been working for
the research and development with respect to GOSAT
"IBUKI"(Figure 7, [10]).
D. PrOGrAM OvervieW
All these science programs can be visible from the JAXA/
EORC science web site [11].
V. CONCLUSIONS
Currently, the JAXA EOP consists of the land observation mission with the SAR and optical high-resolution
sensor, the global climate change mission with microwave radiometer and the optical sensors for ocean surface, the Greenhouse gas emission-measuring mission
for the atmosphere, and the international collaboration
missions. Under implementation of these EOP, well
understanding the geosphere, biosphere, cryosphere,
hydrospace and the atmospheres, are in progress. More
continuous operation of these sensors and the satellites
can improve understanding the earth system.

52

REFERENCES
[1] Group of Earth Observation. [Online]. Available: http://www.
earthobservations.org/index.shtml
[2] M. Shimada, T. Itoh, T. Motooka, M. Watanabe, T. Shiraishi, R.
Thapa, and R. Lucas, "New global forest/non-forest maps from
ALOS PALSAR data (2007-2010)," Remote Sens. Environ., Mar.
25, 2014.
[3] M. Shimada and Y. Osawa, "ALOS-2 science program and high
resolution SAR applications," in Proc. SPIE, Kyoto, Nov. 1, 2012.
[4] S. Suzuki, Y. Kankaku, and M. Shimada, "ALOS-2 acquisition
strategy," in Proc. IEEE Int. Geoscience Remote Sensing Symp., Melbourne, VIC, July 2013, pp. 2412-2415.
[5] M. Shimada, N. Kawano, M. Watanabe, T. Motooka, and M.
Ohki, "Calibration and validation of Pi-SAR-L2," in Proc. AsiaPacific Conf. Synthetic Aperture Radar, Tsukuba, Japan, 2013, pp.
194-197.
[6] M. Watanabe, T. Motohka, Y. Miyagi, C. Yonezawa, and M. Shimada, "Analysis of urban areas affected by the 2011 off the pacific coast of Tohoku earthquake and tsunami with L-Band SAR
full-polarimetric mode," IEEE Geosci. Remote Sensing Lett., vol. 9,
no. 3, pp. 472-476, 2012.
[7] T. Kubota, N. Yoshida, S. Shimizu, R. Oki, H. Hanado, and
T. Iguchi, "Development of synthetic GPM/DPR data using
KaPR sampling experiment of the TRMM/PR," in Proc. IEEE
Int. Geoscience Remote Sensing Symp., Vancouver, BC, 2011, pp.
3421-3424.
[8] M. Kasahara, K. Imaoka, M. Kachi, H. Fujii, K. Naoki, T. Maeda, N.
Ito, K. Nakagawa, and T. Oki, "Status of AMSR2 on GCOM-W1,"
in Proc. SPIE 8533, Sensors, Systems, Next-Generation Satellites XVI,
853307, 2012, p. 10.
[9] K. Imaoka, M. Kachi, H. Fujii, H. Murakami, M. Hori, A. Ono,
T. Igarashi, K. Nakagawa, T. Oki, Y. Honda, and H. Shimoda,
"Global change observation mission (GCOM) for monitoring
carbon, water cycle, and climate change," Proc. IEEE, vol. 98, no.
5, pp. 717-734, 2010.
[10] A. Kuze, T. E. Taylor, F. Kataoka, C. J. Bruegge, D. Crisp, M. Harada, M. Helmlinger, M. Inoue, S. Kawakami, N. Kikuchi, Y. Mitomi, J. Murooka, M. Naitoh, D. M. O'Brien, C. W. O'Dell, H.
Ohyama, H. Pollock, F. M. Schwandner, K. Shiomi, H. Suto, T.
Takeda, T. Tanaka, T. Urabe, T. Yokota, and Y. Yoshida, "Longterm vicarious calibration of GOSAT short-wave sensors: Techniques for error reduction and new estimates of radiometric degradation factors," IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sensing, vol. 52, no.
7, pp. 3991-4004, 2014.
[11] EORC Earth Observation programs. [Online]. Available: http://
www.eorc.jaxa.jp/en/index.html
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