Global Change Observation Mission (GCOM)

Abstract

JAXA is now planning GCOM mission which is composed of a series of satellites. They are called GCOM-W and GCOM-C satellites. Both satellites are composed of 3 satellites with 5 year lifetime. Hence, 13 years of continuous observation can be assured with 1 year overlaps. The first satellite of GCOM-W was launched on 18, May, 2012 while the first one of GCOM-C was launched on 23, Dec. 2017. GCOM-W1 carries AMSR-2. AMSR-2 is very similar to AMSR on ADEOS Ⅱ and AMSR-E on EOS-Aqua with some modifications. GCOM-C1 will carry SGLI. The SGLI will be rather different from GLI. The main targets of SGLI are atmospheric aerosols, coastal zone and land. In order to measure aerosols over both ocean and land, it will have an near ultra violet channel, as well as polarization and bidirectional observation capability. For, coastal zone and land observation, the IFOV of SGLI for these targets is around 250m. The instrument will be composed of several components. The shorter wavelength region adopts push broom scanners, while long wave region uses a conventional whisk broom scanner. The orbit of GCOM-W1 is A-train, while the orbit of GCOM-C1 will be similar to ADEOS Ⅱ. GCOM-C L1B product will be distributed from June 2018, and the initial results from GCOM-C will be presented at the Symposium.