NIES GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTER ISSUE#5 MAY. 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.

ISSUE #5
MAY 2010

CONTENTSIMAGES OF THE MONTH
Gulf of Mexico — Oil Spill off of Louisiana Coast, USA
GOSAT NEWS
Report : WMO-BIPM Workshop
INTERVIEW"IBUKI"'s PI Interview —Dr. Michael Buchwitz
GOSAT PEOPLE
People of "IBUKI" —Isamu Morino
GOSAT IN THE MEDIADATA PRODUCTS UPDATECALENDARANNOUNCEMENT

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

・New Orleans, LA

100km

100km

50mile50mile(left) An image captured on April 25, 2010, by Cloud and Aerosol Imager (CAI) on board "IBUKI" over the Gulf of Mexico off the shore of Louisiana, USA. (Blue = Band 1,
Green = Band 2, Red = Band 3). (right) Another CAI image captured on May 4, 2010. White parts such as seen in the bottom right in both images indicate clouds.

IMAGES OF THE MONTH

image reveals the oil slick spreading overabout an 80km square. The right image is— OIL SPILL OFF OF LOUISIANA COAST, USA
a CAI image captured on May 4, 2010. In— Tsuneo Matsunaga
addition to the large oil slick, spreading oil
Chief, Office for Global Environmental Database,can be seen (indicated by a smaller yellow
Center for Global Environmental Research (CGER), NIES
arrow) close to the mouth of Mississippi River
The coastal area of the Gulf of of people injured and missing, it also (the Mississippi Delta).
As of May 25, 2010, even with the measures
Mexico in the Southern United States is unleashed a major spill of crude oil. There is
known for its abundant oil and natural a possibility of the leaking crude oil to reach such as spraying dispersants and installinggas deposits. A great amount of crude oil the marshlands by the coast and cause a blowout preventers, the leak of oil and its
spread towards the Louisiana coast still seemis produced in the undersea oil fields, and considerable impact on the local ecosystem.
Cloud and Aerosol Imager (CAI) onboard to be continuing.
developments of new oil fields are also still“IBUKI” captures images of the Earth continubeing carried out.
At one drilling platform owned by a private ously, covering the whole globe every three
enterprise for such oil field development, days. The oil floating in the offshore Louisiana
80km off the coast of Louisiana, USA, there is visible in the images captured after April 25,
was an explosion in the night of April 20, 2010. The left image is a CAI image captured
2010. Not only the accident left numbers on April 25. An enhancement process to the

GULF OF MEXICO

1­­NIES GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTER ISSUE#5 MAY. 2010

GOSAT NEWSREPORT: WMO-BIPM WORKSHOP— Tatsuya Yokota, NIES GOSAT Project Leader
Chief, Satellite Remote Sensing Research Section,
Leader, Core Research Project 2, Climate Change Research Program, CGER, NIES
From March 30, to April 1, 2010, World MeteorologicalOrganization (WMO) and Bureau International des Poids etMesures (BIPM) hosted “WMO-BIPM Workshop on Measurement
Challenges for Global Observation Systems for Climate Change
Monitoring – Traceability1, Stability and Uncertainty” at the
WMO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
This workshop was held with the following objectives :1) Identify key measurement issues in climate science,
Numerical Weather Prediction model (NWP) and Earthobservation where there is a requirement for improved
underpinning metrology.
2) Foster closer links and develop dialogue between themetrology and the Earth observation systems communities.
3）Drive agenda setting and road mapping within National
Metrology Institutes (NMIs) and ensure that measurement
science is developed to meet the needs of climate science, NWP
and Earth observation community needs
4) Inform the Earth observation systems community about
the capabilities and plans of the NMIs.
On the first day after the plenary session in the morning,
the attendees separated into two rooms, and the reports weremade in eight different sessions. The eight sessions are as
follows:
A. Climate trends from satellite sounding data
B1. Stable time series for key GHGs and other trace species
B2. Remote sensing of atmospheric composition andtraceability issues in spectroscopic data
C. Radiation and Earth energy balance
D. Earth surface (land and water) temperature
F. Microwave imaginary data in climate and NWP
G. Surface properties: albedo, land cover and ocean colour
H. Ocean salinity

At the B2 session during discussion (Photo : Tatsuya Yokota)
1 Traceability: an ability to trace (to demonstate a linkage of) a measurement or
an instrument to national or international standards with known accuracy, whichfacilitates a comparison between the results created with multiple instruments.

At the B2 session during discussion (Photo : Tatsuya Yokota)

Among them, in contrast to the preexisting B1 session thatthemes around ground-based observation, B2 is a session
newly established in the beginning of this year to examine thetraceability and stability of satellite data.
From GOSAT Project, Yokota from NIES gave a presentation in
the B2 session and joined the discussion to formulate a report.
In B2, other satellite observation projects such as SCIAMACHY2
and OCO3(ACOS)4 made presentations. I believe that from now
on there will be more discussion at the international level on theaccuracy and traceability of satellite observation data.
The workshop program and content of each presentation canbe found at:
http://www.bipm.org/en/events/wmo-bipm_workshop/

2 SCIAMACHY is a passive remote sensing spectrometer observing
backscattered, reflected, transmitted or emitted radiation from the atmosphereand Earth's surface. The instrument flies on board European Space Agency's
ENVISAT satellite, which was launched on March 1, 2002.
3 The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) was a NASA Earth System Science
Pathfinder Project (ESSP) mission designed to make precise, time-dependent
global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) from an Earth orbiting
satellite. On February 24, 2009, OCO failed to reach orbit.
4 ACOS is a group formed around the OCO Science Team, including the
research members from NASA’s JPL, Caltech, and Colorado State University. Using“IBUKI”’s data, ACOS team has collaborated with the GOSAT project to develop
and enhance the CO2 retrieval algorithm for both GOSAT and OCO-2 projects.

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NIES GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTER ISSUE#5 MAY. 2010

GOSAT INTERVIEWA Series: "IBUKI"'s PI Interviews

GOSAT Project hosted the Second Annual Research Announcement

Principal Investigator Meeting (RA PI Meeting) in Kyoto from January 28 toJanuary 29, 2010. At this meeting, 133 people including the PIs of selected RAs
and the related researchers from 18 countries around the world gathered and had
intensive discussions.
For this issue we introduce one of the PIs from the first RA, Michael Buchwitz ofInstitute of Environmental Physics (IUP) of the University of Bremen. (Interviewer:
NIES GOSAT Project Yokota Tatsuya. Kyoto, Japan. January 29, 2010.)

No.4

DR. MICHAEL BUCHWITZ

Researcher,
Institute of Environmental Physics of the University of Bremen,
Germany

Yokota: Thank you for coming here. Today, I'd like to ask you
about your birthplace, your studies in the universities, and yourinvolvement in the measurement of greenhouse gases.
Buchwitz: Since I was a child I wanted to study art, painting,but it was not so easy to find a place at a university to do that.
Directly after high school I decided to do civil service insteadof military service (in Germany one has the choice). Duringthat time, I was working as an ambulance paramedic. This was
so interesting that I applied for a job on the rescue helicopterin Bremen where I worked for about five years. My interest intechnology grew during that time because I was exposed tousing medical equipment. I was also fascinated by the workingsof the human body so that overall my interest in engineeringand natural science grew. At some point, I decided to study
physics also because I thought, “I probably cannot continue
jumping over fences or streams and the like with all the medical
equipment when I am forty or fifty years old, so maybe I should
do something else.” I was already quite old then, 27, when I
started to study physics. In fact, during high school, I was notreally interested in mathematics and physics. This interest camerather late while working as a paramedic.
After finishing my studies, I started to work at the Institute ofEnvironmental Physics of the University of Bremen in Germany
on two satellite projects. One was related to the Global Ozone
1
Monitoring Experiment (GOME) instrument, whose main
purpose has been to measure ozone (O 3), and the other is
SCIAMACHY that was launched after GOME.

of SCIAMACHY. Typically, a PhD student in Germany only gets a
50 percent (part-time) position, which of course also means 50
percent of a full-time salary. However, I already had a family andthree children and therefore was looking for a full time position,
which I found at the University of Bremen. After the specificationof SCIAMACHY was finished I moved on to doing more science.
I worked on developing a radiative transfer model - mainly forthe analysis of GOME data - and also on retrieval algorithms for
GOME and SCIAMACHY.
Yokota: So, your field is pure physics?
Buchwitz: I studied pure physics and moved into environmental
physics later on. For GOME data, I was mainly working on theradiative transfer aspects because shortly after the launch of
GOME, it was recognized that more work on radiative transfer
was needed especially to get the O3 total columns right. I wasworking on the part of the algorithm which is called Airmass
Factor correction. It is done with radiative transfer modeling. I
improved the radiative transfer model and this was also used forthe operational processing of GOME’s total O3 and also nitrogendioxide (NO2) data. This was my first contribution to the GOME
retrieval algorithms.
Yokota: Were you born in Germany?
Buchwitz: Yes, I was born in Germany, and I was even bornin Bremen. So, I am one of the few people working at the
University of Bremen who were also born in Bremen. This is rare,
but I managed to do that.

Yokota: This was in the university student days or after post
doc?
Yokota: Ok. As for your current task, you presented CarbonSat,
Buchwitz: No, I did not even have a PhD at that time. I was hired so you have some plans in the Europe group.
directly as a full time engineer responsible for the specification Buchwitz: Yes, we are also thinking about the future. We now
have good SCIAMACHY data sets since 2002, and we hope that
1 GOME is a nadir-scanning ultraviolet and visible spectrometer for SCIAMACHY will still work for a few more years, but the mission
global monitoring of atmospheric O3. It was launched in 1995 on- will come to an end at some point. So we are concerned aboutboard European Space Agencyʼs ERS-2 satellite which just marked how the time series of carbon dioxide (CO 2) and methane(CH4) measurements from space started by SCIAMACHY will
its ﬁfteenth anniversary in orbit in April 2010.
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NIES GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTER ISSUE#5 MAY. 2010

be continued. Of course, GOSAT is a very important first stepfor this continuation, and we are really looking forward to the
GOSAT data covering several years, but then - what will happen
after SCIAMACHY and GOSAT? Would there be a GOSAT 2?
Would there be another OCO? Would there be a European
contribution? At present, we see a high risk of an observational
gap after GOSAT. GOSAT is an important step in the right
direction. Nevertheless, we are thinking of what can be done in
the future to even further improve the information which canbe obtained on greenhouse gases from satellite observations.
At present, we already have some very good ideas on how thiscan be achieved - and we would like to implement these ideas
in a new satellite mission called Carbon Monitoring Satellite CarbonSat.
Yokota: What is your impression about the present GOSAT data?
Buchwitz: First of all, I am really impressed that the GOSAT
team managed to keep its very demanding schedule proposedsome years ago. When I heard just a few years ago about theplan to launch GOSAT at the end of 2008 or beginning of 2009,
I thought that such an ambitious project cannot be done insuch a short time period. However, the GOSAT team achieved
this. There must have been a very big effort in Japan to keep tothat very tight schedule. On top of that there was a successful
launch. It was great. I know that many people are working
with the GOSAT data for various applications. There is a largely
growing community interested in the GOSAT data. For example,
there are more than 100 people here in Kyoto participating at
the RA PI meeting.
Also, I am sure that a lot of progress can still be made in
improving the accuracy of the data products. I know frommy own experience how difficult it is to do that, and I did not
expect that everything would be perfect from day one after
launch. A lot of good news has been presented here (at the
RA PI Meeting), but also issues have been identified which will
result in further improvements of the algorithms. I am sure thatin one or two years, the data quality will be much higher than it
is now, that the user community will grow and grow, and that
more and more applications can be addressed with the GOSAT
data.

final goal is to get the highest possible product quality for both
sensors.
Yokota: Do you expect that the higher spectral resolution will
give much additional information?
Buchwitz: Yes, definitely. There is more information in the
GOSAT data than in the SCIAMACHY data due to the higher
spectral resolution. There are other advantages also, such as thesmaller pixel size. We can also learn from that to improve futuresatellite missions such as CarbonSat.
Yokota: Do you have some suggestions or comments on our
project? Or expectation?
Buchwitz: Yes, I have one suggestion concerning the algorithm
development for CH4 and CO2 retrievals. For SCIAMACHY, we
initially thought that we could develop one algorithm thatcan retrieve both gases. But in fact, our experience tells us thatthe retrieval of each gas is a different problem. So the current
method that we use for SCIAMACHY CH4 retrieval is different
from the one used for CO 2 retrieval. For example, for CH 4
retrieval, we have a powerful method to get rid of errors causedby clouds and aerosols which cannot be applied to CO2 retrieval
under all circumstances.
My recommendation would be to also think about this for
GOSAT. Using the SCIAMACHY method for GOSAT would leadto a larger number of useful CH4 measurements because thecurrent strict filtering for clouds and aerosols can be significantly
relaxed.

Yokota: As for the GOSAT project, you and other researchers’
results support us to get things done and to keep schedule ofdata delivery.
Buchwitz: I think we can learn a lot from GOSAT. For example,
by analyzing the high spectral resolution GOSAT data, we canalso learn how to improve the SCIAMACHY data products. The

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NIES GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTER ISSUE#5 MAY. 2010

GOSAT PEOPLE

People of "IBUKI"
Validation Research
by

ISAMU MORINO

Senior Researcher, Satellite Remote Sensing Research Section, CGER, NIESMy Role at GOSAT Project.
“Validation is an indispensable task for a GOSAT data product tobe used for scientific purposes.”
For NIES GOSAT Project, I am in charge of validation ofdata products retrieved from "IBUKI"'s observation both as an
operational project and a research. Validation is an indispensable
task for a GOSAT data product to be used for scientific purposes. It
is necessary to evaluate errors in the data retrieved from "IBUKI"'s
observation such as concentrations of greenhouse gases using
the data collected by ground-based and airborne observations
that are more accurate than "IBUKI"'s observation. This process iscalled validation. Figure 1. is a schematic diagram explaining thevalidation by observation. Observations using a ground-based
high-resolution Fourier Transform Spectrometer and an airborne
sensor (already featured in GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTER ISSUE#3, #4) are considered very effective for validation. Some of thecauses of errors in "IBUKI" data are thin clouds (cirrus clouds) andaerosol such as dust in the atmosphere. This is because theseclouds and aerosol have an effect on the light that is observed.
In other words, the retrieval of greenhouse gases is biased when
the clouds and aerosol exist in the atmosphere. For this reason,
it is necessary to obtain information on clouds and aerosol. We
conduct observations using equipment called LIDAR to recordand analyze the scattering of an emitted pulse laser light as wellas an instrument called Skyradiometer to measure the intensityof solar aureole and direct solar radiation spectrum. Currently, weFigure 1. GOSAT schematic diagram of validation by observation. (from NIESGOSAT Project pamphlet)

are working on intensive validation at certain points where thedata are available for validation purposes, and it has been foundthat the GOSAT data products have a negative bias. It is expectedthat new GOSAT data products will be improved (closer to thevalidation data) after some measures are taken.
The validation team.
There are operational aspect and research aspect to the validationof GOSAT data products. To put it in an extreme way, with research
you may spend as much time as possible to get satisfactory results,
but within an operation project you have to get results in a limited
duration of time. This is why the validation team is established
as a part of GOSAT Project Office. As of May 2010, the validationteam led by Manager Osamu Uchino consists of a dedicated staff
member, Morino, NIES Postdoctoral Fellows Yuki Miyamoto andTomoaki Tanaka, Specialist Nobuyuki Kikuchi, and Validation
Team Assistant Staff Chieko Hirobe. When the validation team hasa special favor regarding GOSAT data processing, we work withGOSAT Project Office, and when we have to investigate into thealgorithm to retrieve the GOSAT data products, we cooperate withthe algorithm team. Since the data are acquired through domestic
and overseas institutions, validation is made possible not only by
teamwork of the validation team and NIES, but also with supportsof many other people around the world.
On how I became involved in GOSAT Project.
An "astronomy boy" with a dream.
I became involved in GOSAT Project even though I had neverimagined that I would work for NIES nor I would be involved with"IBUKI." I was born near Lake Biwa rich with beauty of nature.
I remember spending weekends going out fishing in the lakeand marshlands close by. I was also an "astronomy boy." I would
observe meteor streams with numbers of shooting stars, sunspots,
solar and lunar eclipses etc, and I had a dream to study astronomy
in university. At that time, one had to be a really good student inorder to major in astronomy in Japanese universities, but I did not
like the so-called "studying for exams," so I eventually majored inphysics. However, this did not mean physics was an easy study.
I failed in many fields such as particle physics and quantum
statistics. So, I was in a big trouble when I had to pick my research
field. I decided to research on high-resolution laser spectroscopy
based on quantum mechanics because I thought, "I understandthis more or less."
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NIES GOSAT PROJECT NEWSLETTER ISSUE#5 MAY. 2010

Photo 1. The 45m radio telescope and a radio telescope as oneof the radio interferometers (six 10m parabolic antenna) at
Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NRO). (Photo: Courtesy of NRO)IN

"My basis of research, high-resolution molecular spectroscopy is…"
After that, I gained eight years of experience as a post-doc fellow at threedifferent places. First, my research was on high-resolution molecular
spectroscopy that is important in the physical chemistry, and then I moved
on to time-resolved spectroscopy and photochemical reactions in solutions,and then next to working on precise measurement of the spectral line
shapes in a laboratory, which is the basis of the atmospheric remote sensing.
During my last post-doc fellowship, I worked on obtaining the accurate
data such as position, intensity and spectral line widths of absorption linesof gas molecules in laboratories. These data are necessary in the retrieval
process of greenhouse gas concentrations from the absorption spectra in
the atmosphere as in "IBUKI" project. Around the same time, there was ajob posting at NIES about a researcher who has a basic knowledge on suchmatters. I was hired "by luck" and started a research work on atmosphericspectroscopy and became involved in GOSAT Project. My basis of research,high-resoultion molecular spectroscopy involves complicated yet minor
research themes, and it is also a field that has already been established in asense, so it is often said that there is no space for a big progress. However,I think this field is at the foundation of research methods in many different
fields, so it is possible to take advantage of this to start a new research quite
at ease. For this reason, I think I was able to pick a right field as a foundation ofresearch. I would like to continue making efforts to expand my foundational
research so that I can make more contribution to GOSAT.

T HE MEDPRIAOJE C T

Figure 2. Interstellar molecules that have been discovered for the
first time in the world by the 45m radio telescope at NRO. These
are the unstable radicals and ions that cannot exit in the pressureof the atmosphere. (Image: Courtesy of NRO)

Nonetheless, the lab I belonged to turned out to be working very closelywith radio astronomy, which brought up the dream to study astronomy
that I used to have. So, during my master's and doctoral courses, I studied
at the Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NRO) of National Astronomical
Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) under the National Institute of Natural
Sciences (NINS). They have a radio telescope that is still one of world's
largest telescopes in millimeter wavelength (Photo 1). The observatory was
acknowledged worldwide for discovering many kinds of molecules whose
interstellar existence had not been confirmed before. My goal was to do
astronomy observations using this equipment, but the fact is, I was working
on a repetition of lab works to produce and observe the spectrum of theshort-lived molecules that are expected to exist in the interstellar space.
Unfortunately, I was not blessed with a chance to discover new interstellar
molecules, but I was able to earn a doctoral degree studying the spectroscopythat is critical in the interstellar chemistry. Meanwhile, I was able to study
high-resolution molecular spectroscopy based on physics and to master the
instrument and methods for analysis.

On April 14, 2010, “IBUKI” was featured in Japan
Broadcasting Corporation (NHK)'s informational program titled"Close-up Gendai." In the program, "IBUKI"’s research activities
were approached from multiple angles to show the scientificand social contexts of the research. Accorging to the researchers
who use the data such as concentrations of greenhouse gases
retrieved from "IBUKI"'s observation, the data are starting to
be used to spot the natural disasters that produce greenhousegases, and also to develop a system to detect gas leaks ofpipelines that span continents. During the show, Professor
Akimasa Sumi, a commentator from the University of Tokyo
noted, "Acquiring such a large number of data globally in only
one year can be stated as an achievement." On the day of airing,the members of NIES GOSAT Project gathered in a conference
room to view the program.

“IBUKI” was featured inNHKʼs “Close-up Gendai.”G O S AT
Image Source : Video on NHK Close Up Gendai Website

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

Data Processing Status Update from GOSAT Project Office— Fumie Kawazoe

Specialist, NIES GOSAT Project Office

Here we report an update on the data processing
status for the month of April 2010. Continued from March 2010,
FTS L1B data products are processed as V100100, and CAI L1B,
L1B+, and L2 cloud flag products are processed as V00.90 andall of these are available to the public. As reported in the April
issue, it was found that the volcanic plume spreading from
Iceland to Europe could be seen in the images of CAI L1B, L1B+
data products acquired after April 15, 2010.(Details on Iceland
images on GOSAT Project Website :http://www.gosat.nies.go.jp/eng/related/201004.htm)

On the past data, the reprocessing of FTS L1B, CAI L1B, and L2
cloud flag data products from October 2009 is finally finished,
and the consecutive data from June 2009 to April 2010 are
offered to the public. There are multiple versions available foreach data product. Please make sure to confirm the version
numbers when you download the items.
We are currently verifying the FTS L2 SWIR CO 2 and CH 4
column amounts data acquired after March 2010, and planningto make them public as soon as the verification is finished. The
number of the registered general users reached 767 as of May
10, 2010.

CALENDARANNOUNCEMENT

2010/05/31-06/07
Presentation at the Network for the Detection of AtmosphericComposition Change Infrared Working Group (NDACC IRWG)・
Total Carbon Column Observation Network (TCCON) Meeting heldin Wollongong, Australia.
2010/06/14-15
Presentation at the 32nd Review of Atmospheric Transmission
Models Meeting held in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA.
2010/06/16-18
Presentation at the11th Biennial HITRAN Conference held at
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, USA.

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Please feel free to contact : gosat_newsletter@nies.go.jp.
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-Yuki Tanaka, editor

ISSUE #5 MAY. 2010

Issued On : 2010.06.02

edited and published by : NIES GOSAT Project Oﬃce

NIES

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