JAXA’s Earth Observation Program for Environment Satellites (Invited Presentation)

The world is taking actions to resolve the global issues under the international frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs” and the “Paris Accord”.
JAXA’s missions of Earth observation are planned to respond and contribute to these issues.

Clarifying the mechanism of climate change through space-based Earth observation is one of the major challenges that JAXA’s environment monitoring satellites can tackle.
GCOM-W,carrying AMSR2, observes essential water-related parameters globally. It has been successfully in operation for more than the five year designed life time.
Data and information derived have been widely used not only in climate research but also by operational weather and ocean forecast operators.
JAXA has started a study on AMSR2’s successor. GCOM-C, carrying SGLI, will be launched this fiscal year.
It will be used for various operational and science purposes, such as aerosol and air pollution monitoring, volcano and hot spot monitoring, and climate research
including the improvement of climate models.

GOSAT, launched in 2009, has measured GHG from space every 3 days. The data show that the global atmospheric monthly average of CO2 concentration
exceeded 400 ppm in December 2015 for the first time in the history. JAXA is planning to launch GOSAT-2 next year to continue monitoring GHG.