NOTES FROM THE THIRD FORMAL COORDINATED ENERGY AND WATER-CYCLE OBSERVATIONSPROJECT (CEOP) TELECONFERENCE SATELLITE DATA ISSUES HELD ON
3 DECEMBER 2008
FINAL DRAFT, 12 February 20091.

INTRODUCTION

The Third CEOP Satellite Data Teleconference took place on Wednesday 3 December 2008 at
13:30 UTC. The issues that were brought up and discussed on the subject conference calls included:(i)(ii)(iii)

Outcomes of the CEOP Annual Meeting held in Geneva, September 2008;
Status of the CEOP satellite data archive and the CEOP Satellite Data Gateway;
Satellite data providers reports;Participants
The participants were:Toshio Koike
Michael Teague
Gang Ye
Bruce Vollmer
Ed Kearns
Kazuo Umezawa
Yoshiyuki Kudo
Steve WilliamsPetra Koudelova
Sam Benedict

Tokyo, Japan, CEOP Co-Chair & Satellite Data WG Chair
Maryland, USA, NASA MODIS Team
Maryland, USA, NASA MODIS TeamMaryland, USA, NASA AIRS data
Washington DC, USA, NOAA NESDISTokyo, Japan, JAXATokyo, Japan, JAXA/RESTEC
Boulder, Colorado, USA, CEOP Data Management
Tokyo, Japan; CEOP International Coordination Function
San Diego, California, USA; CEOP International Coordination Function

Drs Einar-Arne Herland (Representing ESA), Michael Theobald (Representing
NASA AIRS Team), Christopher Lynnes (Representing NASA AIRS team), John Bates (Representing
NOAA NESDIS), and Satoko Miura (Representing JAXA) were not available for this call, however the NASA
AIRS team was represented by Dr. Bruce Vollmer, the NOAA NESDIS team was represented by Dr. Ed
Kearns, and JAXA team was represented by Drs. Kazuo Umezawa and Yoshiyuki Kudo.
2.

NEXT CONFERENCE CALL

The next, 4th CEOP International Satellite Data Teleconference is proposed to take place on
Wednesday 18 February 2009. Koudelova/Benedict have the action (A1) to inform the group of thedetails of the next call nearer to the time of the call and to coordinate the origination of the call through theWebEx service (action A1a).
3.

SATELLITE DATA GROUP GENERAL ISSUES

3.1 Opening
Benedict welcomed everyone on the call and introduced the call agenda. He mentioned that CEOP
Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) had been revised reflecting the comments received from theGEWEX SSG. The latest version of the SIP documents is available through the CEOP Home Page at:
http://monsoon.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ceop2/implementationplan.html.
3.2 Outcomes of the 2nd CEOP Annual Meeting in Geneva(3.2a) Benedict reported on the outcomes of the 2nd CEOP Annual Meeting that took place in Geneva inSeptember 2008. The meeting was planned and undertaken to move ahead with the implementation ofCEOP in accordance with the strategy outlined in the Strategic Implementation Plan. All of the presentationmaterial provided by the participants at the meeting, including abstracts of talks and posters is available on
the Internet through the CEOP Home Page at: http://monsoon.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ceop2/meetings.html. A briefsummary report on the meeting has been published in the November issue of the GEWEX News
(http://gewex.org/Nov2008.pdf) and subsequently the full meeting report has also been completed andposted on the said CEOP Meetings page.

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Koike pointed out that at the meeting, the science components of CEOP highlighted the importanceand usefulness of CEOP data, in particular the satellite data. Strong call for MODIS and ALOS data wasand is being voiced by number of scientists and thus NASA MODIS and JAXA teams were asked for theircontinued efforts on processing MODIS and ALOS data and making them available through the CEOP
Satellite Data Gateway. At the same time Koike mentioned that also other satellite data from all theproviders are highly desirable in numerous scientific studies and thus CEOP needs to make effort to fulfill its
commitments in delivering the whole range of satellite data as stated in SIP.
(3.2b) The next, 3rd CEOP Annual Meeting would be held in Melbourne, Australia, 19 – 21 August 2009,i.e. the event will precede the GEWEX and iLEAPS science conferences. The venue for the CEOP meeting
will be the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). Further details and the meeting website will be released in duecourse. The participants on the call were asked to consider their participation in this important event andalso possible contribution to the ensuing GEWEX/iLEAPS conferences.
3.3 CEOP Satellite Data Gateway
The CEOP Satellite Data Gateway was opened in June 2008 and allows the registered users todownload satellite data available in the CEOP Satellite Data Archive administered jointly by the University ofTokyo and JAXA. The University of Tokyo IT team is responsible for the database management and making
the data accessible through the Gateway. The Gateway is available at: http://monsoon.t.utokyo.ac.jp/ceop2/satellite/ and the link has been added to the main CEOP Data Management Page
(http://www.eol.ucar.edu/projects/ceop/dm/).
CEOP satellite as well as in-situ and model output data are also accessible through the CEOP
Centralized Data Integration System that offers multiple tools for data visualization and analysis. The
System is available at: http://monsoon.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ceop-dc/ceop-dc_top.htm.
4.

THE SATELLITE DATA ARCHIVE STATUS AND AGENCY REPORTS

4.1 The CEOP Satellite Data Archive Status(4.1a) The work on making new satellite datasets available through the CEOP Satellite Data Gateway isprogressing but it was reiterated that this task was demanding on human as well as financial resources andtherefore it is being undertaken gradually. As it was agreed to at the time of previous calls, the priority would
be on the CEOP Phase 1 EOP-4 data in order to achieve as much complete database as possible for themost recent period of CEOP Phase 1 that is in connection to current CEOP. Data for EOP-3 will follow upand subsequently more recent data for current CEOP phase will be added.
Data currently available through the CEOP Satellite Data Gateway in the three subsets (global,monsoon regions, and reference sites) include:
CEOP Phase 1 EOP-1 period (01/07/2001 – 30/09/2001): DMSP F13 – F15 SSM/I; TRMM PR, TRMM TMI,
GMS-5 VISSR, NOAA AVHRR, TERRA MODIS
CEOP Phase 1 EOP-3, EOP-4 period (01/10/2002 – 31/12/2004): DMSP F13 – F15 SSM/I; TRMM PR,TRMM TMI, GMS-5 VISSR, GOES-9 VISSR, ADEOS-II AMSR, ADEOS-II GLI, Aqua AMSR-E
Detailed data overview is available at the mentioned Gateway site at:
http://monsoon.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ceop2/satellite/docs/eop1.pdf for the CEOP 1 EOP-1 datasets andhttp://monsoon.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ceop2/satellite/docs/eop3-4.pdf for the CEOP 1 EOP-3, EOP-4 datasets.
(4.1b) It was reiterated that it would be highly desirable to periodically prepare “data metrics” describing
the available data and also including statistics of usage. Koike and the UT group have ongoing action(A2) to prepare such document.
4.2 JAXA report (Kazuo Umezava)
Umezawa reported that JAXA continued the generation of the 2008 JAXA’s products according tothe prioritized list provided by CEOP Co-Chair, T. Koike. These include: Aqua/AMSR-E, TRMM/PR, TMI,DMSP/SSM-I re-sampled on three scales (52 reference sites, 5 monsoon areas and entire area of theEarth) and ALOS products on the 12 prioritized areas including the CEOP sites and the Asian Water Cycle
Initiative (AWCI) river basins (http://monsoon.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/AWCI/).

2In addition, JAXA continues work on generation of Terra/MODIS products for CEOP Phase 1 (EOP4) in cooperation with the NASA MODIS Team. After resolving certain remaining issues, the actual transferof the Terra/MODIS products from NASA to JAXA has just begun. However, the transfer speed is not as
fast as it would be desirable and thus other options of data transfer are being considered, namely shippingof a physical disc with the data (see section 4.3 below). Due to time limitation, the work on Aqua/MODIS
data will not begin before April 2009.
4.3 NASA MODIS team report (Michael Teague)
Teague acknowledged and emphasized the excellent work the JAXA team has accomplished inpreparation for the MODIS data transfer and processing into the CEOP format datasets. He confirmed thatthe actual transfer of data had begun but mentioned that the transfer speed was roughly half of data
production speed. Umezawa confirmed that the JAXA team would be able to increase data processing
speed according to the data transfer and thus it was suggested that an alternative way of data transfer beinvestigated. One possibility is copying the NASA data on a physical disc and shipping it to JAXA to Japan.
Teague and Umezawa took the action (A3) to investigate this option and if reasonable to proceed with thisstep.
Teague further confirmed the MODIS team’s plan to begin with the Aqua/MODIS data generationand transfer in April 2009.
4.4 NASA AIRS team report (Bruce Vollmer)
Vollmer reiterated that the NASA AIRS team would make the maximum effort to provide the final
products of the all required AIRS data in the requested formats. He reported that the work on the referencesite subsets for the EOP-3 and EOP-4 periods was advancing and that the team has been evaluating themonsoon region subset procedure. The results of this evaluation will be communicated with the group indue course.
Vollmer further voiced that Drs. Theobald and Lynnes were attending the AIRS science teammeeting and thus could not attend the call. The outcomes of the meeting will be introduced at the next call.
4.5 NOAA report (Ed Kearns)
It was reiterated that the details of data provision procedure by the NOAA team were underdiscussion. Koike and the UT group has on-going action (A4) to review the NOAA data requirements andto communicate with the NOAA team possibilities of the NOAA data provision.
Kearns voiced that they were anticipating further specification of data requirements from CEOPand thus they were not currently undertaking any steps in the CEOP data preparation. Nevertheless, theyplan to be involved in the process and participate in these calls.
4.6 JAXA CEOS/WGISS Test Facilities (WTF) for CEOP
(4.6a) Kudo reported that regarding the JAXA Distributed Data Integration System, no new data orfunctionality was being added due to budget limitations for this fiscal year. Kudo further provided the brief
statistic summary on the system use:
- currently 138 users registered- 20 users accessed the system in October- the required data mostly included satellite and Model Output Location Time Series (MOLTS) data
Kudo further informed the group that their server had been broken and thus the system wasoperating from a provisional hardware and thus the services are slower. Subsequently, in January 2009, anew, more powerful server was installed and the system services can be accessed at the former URL:
http://ceop.restec.or.jp/.
(4.6b) Koike reported that the JAXA’s Distributed Data Integration System was a very convenient tool for
new users of CEOP data and emphasized the need of not only maintaining but further development of theSystem. He reported that participants at various meetings where the system was introduced were muchinterested in its capabilities.

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5.

OTHER CEOP ISSUES

5.1 Meetings(5.1a) The next 3rd CEOP Annual Meeting will be held in Melbourne, Australia, from 19 through 21
August 2009 in conjunction with the GEWEX/iLEAPS science conferences that will take place in Melbourne,
24 – 28 August 2009. Participants were asked to consider their participation in this important event. Further
details of the CEOP meeting will be provided in due course.
(5.1b) The 6th International Scientific Conference on GEWEX and the 2nd iLEAPS Science Conference
would be held in Melbourne, Australia, 24 – 28 August 2009 and the preparations were underway. The
conference website is available at: http://www.gewex.org/2009gewex_ileaps_conf.html. Abstracts for all
sessions are currently being accepted and can be submitted on-line through the meeting website. The
deadline for abstract submission is 15 March 2009.
6.

CLOSING

Koike acknowledged the participants for attending the calls and providing their valuable contributions,comments and suggestions. The call was adjourned at 14:30 UTC.

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