The use of JAXA’s next generation satellites, the EarthCARE and the GCOM-C, for observing overall cloud systems on the Earth is discussed. The satellites will be launched in the middle of 2010-era and contribute for observing aerosols and clouds in terms of climate change, environment, weather forecasting, and cloud revolution process study. This paper describes the role of such satellites and how to use the observing data showing concepts and some sample viewgraphs. Synergistic use of sensors is a key of the study. Visible to infrared bands are used for cloudy and clear discriminating from passively obtained satellite images. Cloud properties such as the cloud optical thickness, the effective particle radii, and the cloud top temperature will be retrieved from visible to infrared wavelengths of imagers. Additionally, we are going to combine cloud properties obtained from passive imagers and radar reflectivities obtained from an active radar in order to improve our understanding of cloud evolution process. This is one of the new techniques of satellite data analysis in terms of cloud sciences in the next decade. Since the climate change and cloud process study have mutual beneficial relationship, a multispectral wide-swath imagers like the GCOM-C SGLI and a comprehensive observation package of cloud and aerosol like the EarthCARE are both necessary.

Date Published: 13 November 2012
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 8523, Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere, Clouds, and Precipitation IV, 852316 (13 November 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.977250

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8523:
Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere, Clouds, and Precipitation IV
Tadahiro Hayasaka; Kenji Nakamura; Eastwood Im, Editor(s)