NIES GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTER ISSUE#11 NOV. 2010

ISSUE # 11
NOV. 2010NIES

GOSJ ATPRO ECT
NEWSL ETTER

Independent Administrative Institution
National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES)
A newsletter on the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite(GOSAT, “IBUKI” ) project from the NIES GOSAT Project Oﬃce.

http://www.gosat.nies.go.jp/

CONTENTS

Center for Global Environmental Researchis celebrating the 20th Anniversary.

NEWS
Level 3 CAI Global Radiance Distribution Released to General Users 01
GOSAT RCF Ranks 10th Most Energy-efficient Supercomputer
02
Blue Planet Prize Recipients Dr. James Hansen and Dr. Robert Watson
Visit NIES
02
GOSAT PEOPLE
People of "IBUKI" - Hiroshi Watanabe
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03
NEWS
Report: Meteorological Society of Japan 2010 Autumn Meeting
Special Session
04
IMAGES OF THE MONTH- Asian Dust Falls in Fall - East Asia
- Eruption of Mount Merapi- Java Island, Indonesia
05
DATA PRODUCTS UPDATE
06
CALENDAR
06

Image 1. A false color image composed of L3 CAI global radiance distribution data from July 15 to July 17, 2010.

NEWS

Level 3 CAI Global Radiance Distribution Released to General Users- Nobuyuki Kikuchi, Specialist, NIES GOSAT Project Office

The GOSAT Project started to distribute a new kind of
GOSAT data products, Level 3 CAI global radiance distribution,
to the general users on November 10, 2010. A Level 3 global
radiance distribution data product contains 3 days’ worth ofglobal radiance distribution data measured by the Cloud andAerosol Imager (TANSO-CAI).
Image 1 shows that the product is made of layers of belts
that flow from the top right to the bottom left to cover thewhole globe with as least space in between as possible. Eachbelt is the trace of “IBUKI”’s one orbit around the globe. Fortyfour rounds made in three days, cover the whole globe. The
Antarctic was not in the image, because it was winter in theSouthern Hemisphere in July, and the sunlight does not reachthe area owing to the polar night.
Level 3 global radiance distribution data products areprojected as equirectangular maps and the data are aligned
every 0.125 degrees mesh (each data is 2880 x 1440 px).
For each mesh, a L1B+ data closest to the center of mesh’s
latitude and longitude is selected, using the nearest neighboralgorithm. The latest data is applied if multiple dates are eligible
for one mesh. One product contains the radiance data of band
1 to 4, as well as the satellite zenith/azimuthal angle and solar
zenith/azimuthal angle.

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NIES GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTER ISSUE#11 NOV. 2010

NEWS

GOSAT RCF Ranks 10th Most Energy-efficient Supercomputer- Yuki Tanaka, Specialist, NIES GOSAT Project Office

TFLOPS (please refer to the April issue for other details on thespecification). These efforts led to GOSAT RCF’s ranking in TOP
10 for the Green500 list.
This Green 500 list was announced at the SC101, one ofworld’s biggest international conferences on supercomputers in
New Orleans on November 19, 2010 (JST).
The ranking is updated every June and November (For June it
is announced at the International Supercomputing Conference).
From Japan, Tokyo Institute of Technology ranked the secondand RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science ranked
the fourth.
The GOSAT Research Computation Facility (GOSAT
For any questions on this article, please contact the Office forRCF) of the NIES GOSAT Project was ranked as the 10th Global Environmental Database (Chief Tsuneo Matsunaga).
on the Green 500, a ranking of the most energy-efficient
supercomputers in the world.
The GOSAT RCF (installed at the National Institute forEnvironmental Studies (NIES) in March 2010) plays a critical rolein the algorithm research for the higher-level data processing of
IBUKI’s observation.
In recent years, the enormous energy consumption bycomputer systems that process a large amount of data such as
satellite data at high speed has been considered problematic.
At the GOSAT RCF, various creative ideas made the lowenergy consumption possible. The system was built with aconsideration for the global environment while maintaininga high performance needed for the operation of the GOSATThe GOSAT Research Computation Facility (GOSAT RCF)
Project.
In the early fiscal year of 2010, the General Purpose The Green500 List – November 2010 webpage：
Computing on Graphics (GPGPU), in other words, the key to http://www.green500.org/lists/2010/11/top/list.php
computation performance, were updated to the latest model, 1 SC 10: An abbreviation for The International Conference for high Performance
NVIDIA Tesla C2050. Its total theoretical peak performance Computing Networking, Storage, and Analysis (The SC Conference Series) held in(double precision floating point number) was improved to 177 2010.

NEWSBlue Planet Prize Recipients Dr. James Hansen and Dr. Robert Watson visit NIES
- Yuki Tanaka, Specialist, NIES GOSAT Project Office

NIES invited the recipients of this year’s Blue Planet Prizes, Dr.
James Hansen (Director at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies)and Dr. Robert Watson (Chief Scientific Adviser of the U.K. Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), for a commemorative lecture
on October 28, 2010. The Blue Planet Prizes are awarded to individuals
or organizations that make outstanding achievements that help solve
global environmental problems. The Asahi Glass Foundation selects
the recipient of prize each year. On the same day of their lecture,
an informal meeting was set up for the two and the researchers at
the Center for Global Environmental Studies (including NIES GOSAT
Project Leader Tatsuya Yokota) to discuss the studies related to theglobal environment at NIES.
On “IBUKI,” topics such as ‘a possibility of using “IBUKI” data forvalidation of CO2 emissions’ and ‘ a possibility of minimizing possible
research overlapping in future satellite projects by promoting astronger cooperative ties in the international research community’
were discussed.
Dr. Hansen pioneered in understanding and forecasting of the
global climate change in 1950s and 60s. In 1980’s, he predictedthe ‘global warming,’ and testified at the U.S. Senate and Houseof Representatives to call for actions. He has been calling on thegovernments and the public to take immediate action to reduce andmitigate the impact of climate change.
Dr. Watson has played a mediator role to bridge science andpolitics while working for the international organizations such as
NASA, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and theWorld Bank, and works on handling issues of climate change andglobal environment.

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At the informal meeting held at NIES on October 28, 2010. (from left) Dr.
Robert Watson and Dr. James Hansen. Photo by Yuki Tanaka.

NIES GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTER ISSUE#11 NOV. 2010

GOSAT PEOPLE

Messages from People of "IBUKI"
Operation/Management

NIES GOSAT Project Office Manager
by

HIROSHI WATANABE

Photo by Yuki Tanaka

I was born at the peak of so-called baby boom in Japan.
I was born in 1947, the Year of the Boar (one of the twelve
animals of the Japanese zodiac), and at the peak of so-called baby
boom. My school-year story is quite simple. I spent 12 years of myelementary, middle, and high school days at Gyosei Gakuen (Gyosei
means morning star in Japanese), a private school in Tokyo. Then, I spent
another 12-years, from 18 to 30 years old, at The University of Tokyo(Todai), where I received my bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees,
until I started my first job (Just for your information, the year I entered
the primary school, university, and my first company were all in theYear of the Horse…). Normally at Todai, the academic programs can befinished in 4 years for the bachelor’s degree, 2 years for the master’s, and3 years for the PhD. It took me one extra year for my bachelor’s degree
because I spent a year studying at Grenoble University on a scholarshipfrom the French government. And then, the marriage and sufferingfrom sudden hearing loss delayed my master’s degree for one year. I
finished my doctoral program in three years, but I stayed in the lab fora year afterwards for more study. At Todai, I started to major in nuclear
engineering in my third year of undergraduate program at the Facultyof Engineering. My major during my graduate program was also nuclear
engineering. To be more specific, my specialty was radiochemistry.
My hobbies are soccer and …
My hobby is also simple: soccer. I started kicking a soccer ball inelementary school at Gyosei, and I was a member of the soccer team
all the way through middle and high school. At Todai also, I joined theirsoccer team, and I was a member except for during the year in France.
At Gyosei, the team won the Tokyo prefecture championship, and at
Todai, the team went as high as fourth in the division 2 in the Kanto
region. I still play soccer now. I am a member of the ASTRA Club of
Gyosei, the Todai OB Team, and the Raizes at NIES. In fact, I have anotherhobby (something to drink) that starts with the letter “s” in Japanese but
I will talk about this in another occasion…
The petroleum exploration using remote sensing technology
became my work.
So, after finishing my graduate study in 1978, I joined the JAPANPETROLEUM EXPLORATION CO. LTD. (JAPEX). You might wonder why
I jumped into the petroleum industry even though my specialty was
nuclear power. There was a researcher who would come to Todai fromJAPEX to study the gamma-ray and Newton logging (logging means amethod to measure geophysical quantities at the petroleum well). He
introduced me to his study, and it was the start. It could also be that analumnus of the laboratory worked for JAPEX already. Right after I started
at the company, I was assigned to organize the launch of their remotesensing section. I was not in control of the situation yet, but thus the
petroleum exploration using remote sensing technology became mywork.
This was also when I experienced my first culture shock. I jumped
into the world of petroleum from the world of nuclear science. I did
not take any earth science classes even in high school, so I barely knew
about geology and geophysical sciences. I was used to finding out
about consequences from theories such as mathematics and physics,
so it was a new experience for me to find out about underlying theories
from the natural phenomenon.
At that time, the only earth observation data that existed were Landsat1/
1 Landsat: A series of Earth Resources Technology Satellites jointly managed byNASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. The first Landsat was launched in 1972, andMSS , but the size of this business was expanding since the oilcompanie’s so-called the "Petroleum Majors" were going towards thisdirection. It was around this time when Remote Sensing Technology
Center of Japan (RESTEC) was founded, and after a short while, Earth
Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center (ERSDAC) was also founded.
Around this time, the satellites such as SPOT3, another Landsat, and4
Seasat were launched one after another. My job was to load andanalyze these data.
In the mid 1980’s, a project to launch Japanese remote-sensors
was started with the funding from the Oil Special Account of Japanese
government. I was involved in the Japanese Earth Resources Satellite(JERS-1)5 project, and then a collaborative project with NASA, the6
ASTER plaroject. Since 1994, I had been a project manager of ASTER
at EARSDAC as an expert on loan from JAPEX to develop their ground2

the seventh and latest was launched in 1999. It is often said a pioneer of the earth
observing satellites.
2 Multi-Spectral Scanner (MSS): An optical sensor aboard Landsat satellite. The
sensor measures the reflected solar radiation with its four channels ranging from thevisible to near-infrared region. As a successor of MSS, there is another high quality
sensor called Thematic Mapper (TM).
3 Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT): A series of Earth observing
satellites of France. The first SPOT was launched in 1986, and the fourth and latest was
launched in 2002.
4 Seasat: The first satellite carrying SAR with a purpose to observe the Earth’s
oceans from the orbit. The satellite was launched in June 1978, and the operation wasended in October 1978.
5 Japanese Earth Resources Satellite 1 (JERS-1): An Earth observation satellite
to cover the global land area for the purpose of resource exploitation, national
land survey, agriculture, forestry, and fishery, environmental protection, disasterprotection, and coastal monitoring, etc.
6 Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection radiometer(ASTER): An advanced optical sensor with 14 spectral channels ranging from thevisible to thermal infrared region. It is a cooperative effort between NASA and Japan's
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). ASTER is on Terra satellite launched in
December 1999 as a part of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS).

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NIES GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTER ISSUE#11 NOV. 2010

system, but I moved permanently to ERSDAC to work on the operation
7of ASTER in 1999 right before the launch of Terra satellite that carried
ASTER. NASA’s related organizations such as Goddard Space Flight
Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory cooperated with us indevelopment and operation, and the ASTER data are now used globally.
In the mean time, I was also involved with one of SAR8 sensors, PALSAR910aboard ALOS satellite.
I can take on one more new challenge.
ASTER had been operating almost steadily for more than its five year
design life when I was offered a position as a project office manager
for the soon-to-be-launched satellite, GOSAT “IBUKI” at NIES. I was alittle nervous about changing my jobs at the age almost sixty, but I also
had the feeling that I can take on one more new challenge, and I took
the offer. So, in September 2006, I moved my workplace and residence
7 Terra: A satellite developed by NASA as a flagship of the Earth Observing System(EOS) series. Five sensors including ASTER and MODIS are aboard the satellite. The
satellite measures clouds and aerosols and its radiation balance, land surface, andcarbon cycle.
8 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR): An active microwave sensor that transmitsa microwave and detects the wave reflected back by objects to observe thetopographical features, such as land cover type, undulations, roughness and slopes athigh resolution.
9 Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR): A microwave
sensor developed based on JERS-1 SAR (Japanese SAR made in 90s) with improved
functions and performance. With an ability to analyze the geological structure at theaccuracy of a few centimeters, it is expected to contribute to resource exploration anddevelopment, observation of vegetation, classification of land use.
10 Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS): A Japanese satellite developed
by JAXA. ALOS has three remote-sensing instruments: the Panchromatic Remotesensing Instrument for Stereo Mapping (PRISM), the Advanced Visible and Near
Infrared Radiometer type 2 (AVNIR-2), the Phased Array type L-band Synthetic
Aperture Radar (PALSAR). The data are used for purposes such as cartography,
regional observation, disaster monitoring, resources surveying, and resource
surveying. It was launched in January 2006.

altogether to Tsukuba.
This is when I experienced my second culture shock. Up until then,the land surface was the subject of remote sensing for me, and theinterference from atmosphere was the subject of removal. However, thistime, the targets were switched. The subject matter is the atmosphere,
and the interference from land surface had to be removed. It was a
precious experience that I had to think over what I had thought was
the common sense. Since then, four years have already passed. I feelthat I have learned to think in the atmosphere-oriented manner. It is
fortunate that “IBUKI” was launched successfully in January 2009, andthe operation has been quite smooth. So far, the NIES GOSAT Project
has released up to level 2 and 3 products, and has facilitated exchange
and cooperation among researchers worldwide through the Research
Announcements that call for research proposals, as well as throughinteractions with similar satellite projects such as OCO11.
I think I have to be grateful that everything including the launches
and the nominal operations of the satellite projects I have been
involved are successful. Under such fortunate circumstance, I was alsoable to work with the remote sensing both of land and atmosphere.
I could experience two different standpoints. This has enabled me tolook at things from the both sides of wall. I feel that there is not enoughcross-genre discussion between the two. I hope to bridge them in some
way with my experience of seeing things from the both sides. Anotherprecious experience is that I was able to interact with researchers andusers not only in Japan but also in the world. I feel that I gained a broad
view through this as well.
I hope you enjoyed my long essay, and hope to continue mycontribution to the GOSAT Project.
11 The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO): One of NASA’s Earth System Science
Pathfinder Project (ESSP) missions, designed to make precise and time-dependent
global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) from an Earth orbiting
satellite. Unfortunately, the launch of OCO satellite failed on February 24, 2009.
However, the OCO-2 mission is now underway.

NEWS

Report: Meteorological Society of Japan 2010 Autumn Meeting Special Session‘Utilization Studies of the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) “IBUKI” Data’- Makoto Inoue, NIES Postdoctoral Fellow, Satellite Remote Sensing Research Section, CGER, NIES
Meteorological Society of Japan’s 2010 Autumn Meeting washeld in Kyoto, Japan, in October, from 27th to 29th. On the first day ofthe meeting, a special session ‘Utilization Studies of the Greenhouse
Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) “IBUKI” Data’ was organized (Thechairpersons were the University of Tokyo’s Associate Professor
Ryoichi Imasu, and two NIES researchers). The session attracted about
70 people, and 17 people made oral presentations.
During the first half of the session, the presentations were mainlyon the calibration status of TANSO-FTS’s observation data, thecharacteristics of retrieved concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) andmethane (CH4), and comparative validation with other data.
The lecture given by Assistant Professor at Chiba University Naoko
Saitoh was on the characteristics of CO2 and CH4 concentrations using
the band 4 (thermal infrared) of TANSO-FTS. It was fascinating thatwith the GOSAT data, the vertical profiles of the greenhouse gases, notjust their horizontal distributions, are starting to become clear.
For the latter half of the session, the presentations were on various
At the special session ‘Utilization Studies of the Greenhouse Gases Observing
application studies using “IBUKI”’s data, including detection of cirrus
Satellite (GOSAT) “IBUKI” Data’ during the Meteorological Society of Japan 2010
clouds and aerosols, and estimation of greenhouse gas emissions.
Autumn Meeting. Photo by Makoto Inoue
Meteorological Research Institute’s Senior Researcher Dr. Takashi Maki
reported that GOSAT observation data’s existing bias was corrected current status of the GOSAT data products and the latest studies using
and extreme deviations from the climatological concentrations were the GOSAT data. I am expecting that the further improvement ofremoved when the GOSAT data were assimilated into a chemical algorithm and additional analysis will lead to a better understandingtransport model using the ensemble Kalman filter.
of greenhouse gases’ 3D structure and evaluation of carbon balance.
This session was a great opportunity for me to learn about the4­­

NIES GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTER ISSUE#11 NOV. 2010

IMAGES OF THE MONTH — Nobuyuki Kikuchi, Specialist, NIES GOSAT Project Office

Asian Dust Falls in Fall - East Asia
The Asian dust (yellow dust) phenomenon, known to occur usually in the springtime, occurred in the fall. The dust traveled all theway to Japan from China, and in Kyushu Island the visibility was less than 5 km at one point. The image is a composite of “IBUKI”’s
images from November 10th, 11th, and 12th. The image shows that the yellow dust (light brown) is stirred up in the desert area in
China on 10th, then it crosses Yellow Sea on 11th, and on 12th, following the low pressure in the Sea of Japan, it spreads from the Sea
of Japan over Kyushu to Jeju island.

©JAXA/NIES/MOE

Eruption of Mount Merapi- Java Island, Indonesia

図 インドネシアジャワ島ムラピ山の噴煙

At the Mount Merapi on Java Island, Indonesia, it was spotted that the eruption
continued two weeks after the first eruption on October 26, 2010.
The image taken at 05:08AM (UT) on November 10, 2010 captures the volcanic plume(light brown) from Mount Merapi.

5­­NIES GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTER ISSUE#11 NOV. 2010DATA PRODUCTS UPDATE

Data Processing Status Update from GOSAT Project Office - Fumie Kawazoe, Specialist, NIES GOSAT Project Office

Here we report an update on dataprocessing status for late October and earlyNovember 2010.
We are currenty processing and releasing
the V100100 of the FTS L1B data products, theV00.90 of the CAI L1B, L1B+, and L2 cloud flag
data products. Continued from the previous
month, FTS L2 SWIR CO2 and CH4 column
amount data products are processed andavailable to the general users as V01.xx.
The FTS L2 SWIR CO2 and CH4 column
amount data products ( V01.30) for themonths from April 2010 to September 2010
are available to the general users starting
November 24. The CAI L3 global radiancedistribution data products were also madeavailable to the general users starting

November 10, 2010. (For more detail, pleaserefer to the article on page 1 'Level 3 CAI Global
Radiance Distribution Released to General
Users') .
Other events on the schedule are therelease of the FTS L3 global CO2 and CH4
distribution (SWIR) data products to the generalusers on November 30, 2010, and an upgradeof FTS L1B data on December 2, 2010.
On October 27, 2010, GOSAT User Interface
Gateway (GUIG), a website for GOSAT data
distribution, was re-launched with a new
design and an improved Menu section. (Pleaserefer to the ‘News & Topics’ on GUIG top pagefor more information on the changes.)
The number of registered general users
reached 927 as of November 25, 2010.

CALENDAR

2010/12/13-17

Participation at the American Geophysical Union(AGU) 2010 Fall Meeting held in San Francisco, USA.

? ?IBUKI?QUIZ??
???

What is the name of this river,and where is this? (tip：The

image is south-up and eastYangtze River in China (the image is rotated 180 degrees.) The clouds were removed when synthesizing "IBUKI"'s data from October
1, 2010 to October 31, 2010.

left...)NIES GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTERISSUE #11 NOV. 2010

Issued On : 2010.12.08
Revised On : 2011.02.08

edited and published by : NIES GOSAT Project Oﬃce

NIES

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