JAXA Earth Observation Program and Data Products

Misako KACHIEarth Observation Research Center, Space Technology Directorate I

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

Targets (JFY: Apr-Mar) 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025Disasters Management

& Land MonitoringJERS1/OPS, SAR (1992-1998)ADEOS-I/AVNIRALOS/AVNIR2, PALSAR (2006-2011)

Climate System•Climate changeADEOS-I/OCTS (1996-1997)ADEOS-II/GLI (2003)

•Water CycleADEOS-II/AMSR (2003)Aqua/AMSR-E (2002-2011)

•Greenhouse gases

Japanese Earth Observation Satellites

On orbitMission status

[Land and disaster monitoring]

[CO2, CH4]

[Wind, SST , water vapor, rainfall]

[Precipitation 3D structure]

[CO2, CH4, CO]

Development

TRMM / PR

ALOS-2 / PALSAR-2

GPM / DPR

GCOM-W / AMSR2

ALOS-3/Advanced Optical

ALOS-4/Advanced SAR

Pre-phase-A

Himawari-9 (standby)Himawari-8

[Cloud, aerosol, SST]MTSAT-1RMTSAT-2 (Himawari-7)JMA geostationary

meteorological satellites

with NASA

with NASA

with MOE

GOSAT-GW/TANSO-3

Himawari-10/11 planning

GOSAT-GW/AMSR3

Completed

AMSR-2 Successor Sensor

TANSO-2 Successor Sensor

[Wind, SST , water vapor, precipitation]

with MOEGOSAT / FTS, CAI

(Himawari-6)

MOE[CO2, CH4, NO2]

[Land and disaster monitoring]

[Land and disaster monitoring]

Himawari-8 (standby)Himawari-9

2

[Cloud and aerosol 3D structure]GCOM-C / SGLI

EarthCARE / CPRwith ESA

[Vegetation, aerosol, cloud, SST, ocean color]

GOSAT-2

F/O Feasibility Study

PhysicalOcean surface heat fluxSea ice Sea level Sea stateSea surface currentsSea surface salinitySea surface stressSubsurface salinitySea surface temperature Subsurface currentsSubsurface temperature

BiogeochemicalInorganic carbon Transient tracersNitrous oxide NutrientsOcean colour Oxygen

Biological/ecosystemsMarine habitat propertiesPlankton

OceanBiosphere Hydrosphere

Above-ground biomass

Groundwater

Albedo LakesEvaporation from land

River discharge

Fire AnthroposphereFraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR)

Anthropogenic Greenhouse gas fluxes

Land cover Anthropogenic water use

Land surface temperature CryosphereLeaf area index Glaciers SnowSoil carbon Ice sheets and ice

shelvesSoil moisture Permafrost

Land

Surface Upper-air Atmospheric Composition

Precipitation Earth radiation budget

Aerosol and ozone precursors

Pressure Lightning Aerosols properties

Radiation budget

Temperature Carbon dioxide, methane & other greenhouse gases

Temperature Water vapour Cloud properties

Water vapour Wind speed & direction

Ozone

Wind speed and direction

Atmosphere

GCOM-C GCOM-W GOSAT, GOSAT-2GPM/DPR ALOS-2

JAXA Satellites’ Contributions to ECVs

3

Climate Monitoring by GCOM-CGlobal Change Observation Mission - Climate (GCOM-C)

Water cloud effective radius

RGB image

Total suspended matterEarth system model

(ESM)Vegetation index

Ocean Chlorophyll-a

Fire smoke

Cloud particle radius is affected by the aerosol

Aerosol and clouds by SGLI bands

JAXA/GCOM-C observation:üSpatial distributionüSeasonal changeüYear-to-year changeü…

üModel-Observation comparisonü Correlation among variablesü …

ü Aerosol and cloud processes and radiative forcing

JAMSTEC, Tokyo Univ.

The SGLI 380nm channel clearly shows aerosols (fire smoke) as brown color areas

Offshore California on 17 Nov. 2018

Environmental monitoringby 250m

Global ecosystem change

® Improvement of the ESM® Improvement of future prediction

of the future global environment8-day mean during 24-31 Mar. 2020 Around Japan Sea on 6 May. 2021

RGB image

GCOM-CEnergyBudget

Carbon& Material

Cycle

Sea Surface Temperature

4

New AMSR2 Research ProductsGlobal Change Observation Mission - Water (GCOM-W)

GCOM-W

Water Cycle

Multi-band SST (research)6GHz SST (standard)

Missing due to RFIs

Reduce missing area due to RFIs by referring 7GHz SST

High ResolutionSea Ice Concentration(research) in 5-km res.

Sea Ice Concentration(standard) in 15-km res.

Aqua/MODISFalse color imageR:7ch/G:2ch/B:1ch

5

JAXA/GCOM-W observation:ü Observation started since 3 Jul. 2012ü Finest spatial resolution among PMWsü 6.9/7.3 GHz for SST and Soil Moistureü Near-real-time distribution (2-3 hr latency) ü Ver.4 products for SST & Sea Surface Wind

Speed have been released in Oct. 2020ü Research Products are available via

https://suzaku.eorc.jaxa.jp/GCOM_W/research/resdist.html

New Research Product “Soil Moisture and Vegetation Water Content based on the Land Data Assimilation Methodology”using ECHLA* is in preparation* See Sawada et al. (2017), Sawada (2020), etc.

Soil Moisture Content (0-5cm)July 2019

Vegetation Water ContentJuly 2019

GSMaP is the Japanese GPM product, and a multi-satellite precipitation product from a blended Passive Microwave radiometer(PMW)-IR algorithm.

A review paper of GPM-GSMaP V03 & V04 was published: Kubota et al. (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24568-9_20

Displaying accumulated rainfall in some temporal scale (daily, pentad, weekly, 10-days and monthly), indices related to extreme heavy rainfall and drought.

Detection of heavy rainfall and drought is based upon Tashima et al. (2020, JSTARS).https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2020.3014881

Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP)

Extreme heavy rainfall in Kyushu, Japan for weekly precipitation (July 1-7, 2020)

We started to operate a homepage “JAXA Climate Rainfall Watch”, which provides information about extreme heavy rainfall and drought over the world using the GSMaP.Graphical User Interface of the "JAXA Climate Rainfall Watch" website (https://sharaku.eorc.jaxa.jp/GSMaP_CLM/) 6

2018-Now

2009-Now

Global CO2 concentrations observed by GOSAT and GOSAT-2, CH4 and CO (September 2019)

CO2 Observation CH4 (upper) & CO (lower) Observation

A-decade-long GHG observation by GOSAT seriesGreenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) & GOSAT-2

7

Carbon& Material

Cycle

GOSAT

GOSAT-20.12

0.09

0.06

0.00

XCO [ppm]

0.03

GOSAT-2 Analyzed by JAXA/EORC

Orbit

Same orbit as ALOS-2Altitude: 628 km at the equatorInclination angle: 97.9°Local sun time at Desc.: 12:00 +/- 15 minRevisit time: 14 day (15-3/14 rev/day)

Instruments- PALSAR-3 (Phased Array type L-band

Synthetic Aperture Radar-3)- SPAISE3 (SPace based AIS Experiment 3)

Satellite Mass Approx. 3 tons at launch

Designed lifetime 7 years

Future ALOS series Missions:ALOS-3 Optical (2021) & ALOS-4 L-band SAR (2022)

8

ALOS-3 (Optical)

ALOS-4 (Radar)

Reso

lutio

n (m

)

Swath (km)

3

10

16

50 20070 75

JERS-1 ▼(1992-1998)

ALOS ▼(2006-2011)

▼ALOS-2(2014-)

▼ALOS-4(2022-)

②Wider observation

50 km Swath(ALOS-2)

ALOS-4 Coverage(Hawaii Island)

200 km Swath(ALOS-4)

Orbit

Sun-synchronous sub-recurrentAltitude: 669 km at the equatorLocal Sun Time at Desc: 10:30 am +/- 15 minRevisit time: 35 days (Sub-cycle 3 days)

Instruments - Wide-swath and high-resolution optical imager - Dual-frequencies Infrared sensor (hosted payload)

Ground Sampling Distance (GSD)

- Panchromatic band (Pa): 0.8 m- Multispectral band (Mu): 3.2 m (6 bands)

Quantization 11 bit / pixel

Swath width 70 km at nadir

Mission data downlink Direct: Ka and X-band; via. Data Relay Satellite

Satellite Mass Approx. 3 tons at launch

Duty 10 mins / recurrent

Designed lifetime 7 years

ALOS-3 simulation image

To be launched in JFY2022

To be launched in JFY2021

Disaster/Mapping

Disaster/Forest

Future Missions for Climate & Water:EarthCARE (2022) & GOSAT-GW (2023)• Europe-Japan joint mission• 3 dimensional global distributions

of cloud and aerosol to contribute to precise understanding of climate change

• JAXA and NICT provides world's first satellite-based cloud vertical motion by the Clod Profiling Radar (CPR) with 94 GHz with Doppler Capability at 0.8 km spatial resolution.

Orbit

Sun-synchronous sub-recurrent orbitAltitude: approx. 400kmInclination angle: 97.05°Local Sun Time at Desc.: 14:00Revisit time: 25 days

Instruments

- Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) by NICT & JAXA- Atmospheric Lidar (ATLID) by ESA- Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI) by ESA)- Broad-Band Radiometer (BBR) by ESA

Mass Approx. 2.2 tons at launchDesigned lifetime 3 years

EarthCARE

To be launched in JFY2022

GOSAT-GW

To be launched in JFY2023

Cloud/Aerosol

Radiation Budget

Green-house gases

Orbit

Sun-synchronous sub-recurrent orbitAltitude: approx. 666kmInclination angle: 98.06°Local Sun Time at Desc.: 1:30 +/- 15 minRevisit time: 3 days

Instruments

- Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 3 (AMSR3)- Total Anthropogenic and Natural emissions mapping SpectrOmeter-3 (TANSO-3) (for Ministry of Environment in Japan (MOE))

Mass Approx. 2.6 tons at launchDesigned lifetime 7 years

• Carrying two instruments, AMSR3 and TANSO-3.

• AMSR3 (JAXA) will succeed AMSR series observations adding new high frequency channels (166 & 183 GHz) for snowfall retrievals and water vapor analysis for NWP and additional 10.25 GHz for robust SST retrievals.

• TANSO-3 (led by Ministry of Environment in Japan) uses imaging spectrometer technology to measure CO2, CH4 and NO2 globally with medium and locally with high spatial resolution.

AMSR3 for both snow & rain

Water Cycle

9

2014-

Next Generation Precipitation Radar Discussed in JAXA

• JAXA has large heritage of the TRMM/PR and GPM/DPR, and the data record of spaceborne precipitation radars is more than 20 years.

• Feasibility study for the next generation precipitation radar is now ongoing in JAXA, and discussed with NASA for ACCP (Aerosol, Cloud, Convection and Precipitation) collaboration.

2000 2005 20152010 2020

TRMM/PRKu-band (13.8GHz)

1997 - 2015

Overlap->calibration

From tropics to mid latitudes & from single to dual freq.

TRMM precip. GPM precip.

2025 2030

Higher sensitivity & Doppler CapabilityTo realize1. Understanding of cloud-precipitation process2. Providing improved information for weather and

disaster prevention; collaboration with high resolution numerical models

3. Monitoring the extreme and its application for various global water-related issues

What is currently being discussed is...

GPM/DPRKu-band (13.6GHz)Ka-band (35.5GHz)

EarthCARE/CPRw-band (94 GHz)

with Doppler

Next Precip. Radar

year

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Satellite and Model Collaborations toward Earth Environment Predictions

Ocean Model

Atmospheric Model

Land/River ModelSatellite Data

with JAMSTEC, RIKEN with U. Tokyo

with U. Tokyo, RIKENwith JMA, MRI, NIES, Kyushu Univ. Severe WeatherHeavy Rainfall,

Flood

Inte

ract

ion Interaction

Alert for Public Health

Fisheries,Ocean Transport,

Climate

Drought, Flood,Water-related

Hazard

Aerosol Model

Climate Model &Earth System Model with U. Tokyo, JAMSTEC, etc.

ECVs

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“JAXA Realtime Weather Watch” GSMaP Assimilation in JAXA Supercomputer System (NEXRA)

• JAXA, Univ. Tokyo and RIKEN installed the NICAM-LETKF data assimilation system using the GSMaP at JAXA supercomputer system generation 2 (JSS2) and has experimentally operated it in near-real time (Kotsuki et al. 2019, SOLA).

Assimilating GSMaP with NICAM-LETKF

NICAMEnsemble

Forecasts

First guess

Observation

LETKF

Analysis

● Radiosondes (L=400 km)● GSMaP (L=250 km)

Time integration (6-hr)

Gaussian-Transformation

Quality Control PrecipitatingMember (>70 %)

(100 member ensemble)

NICAM-LETKF at JAXA Research Analysis = NEXRA

Monitoring home page of the NEXRA is now available as “JAXA realtimeweather watch”.

https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/theme/NEXRA/

Kotsuki et al., 2019: Predictability of Record-Breaking Rainfall in Japan in July 2018: Ensemble Forecast Experiments with the Near-real-time Global Atmospheric Data Assimilation System NEXRA. SOLA, 15A,https://doi.org/10.2151/sola.15A-001.

14 km res.Global scale

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Global Terrestrial Hydrological Simulation System;Today’s Earth

TE-Global (Global System) TE-Japan (Regional System)

Horizontal resol. (lat/lon) Land： 0.5 deg., River： 0.25 deg. 1/60 deg.

Temporal resol. Every 3 hour Every hour

Latency About 3 days Real-time*forecast data distribution is limited within research purpose due to the Japanese law

Satellite data used in the System（in prep.）

GSMaP, Terra/Aqua MODIS, SRTM30, NOAA AVHRR, (AW3D, GCOM-C)

SRTM30, NOAA AVHRR, (GSMaP, Himawari-8, ALOS HRLC)

Product River discharge, Flooded area, Soil moisture, Snow amount, Latent heat flux, etc.

https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/water/

• JAXA has developed the “Today’s Earth”, the satellite merged global terrestrial hydrological simulation system, under the joint research with the University of Tokyo.

• Today’s Earth can visualize risk indices in terms of return period as well as various hydrological products.

Example of flood risk estimation by TE-Global in the case of the sever flood in New South Wales, Australia, March 2021https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/21/australia/australia-flood-natural-disaster-intl-hnk/index.html 13

JAXA Himawari ProductsProduct name Grid size Interval Format Estimated size per day

Level 1

Himawari Standard Data (HSD) (JMA original format)Reflectance (6CH) & brightness temperature (10CH) 500m/1km/2km 10min (full)/

2.5min (Japan)HSD(file per channel)

122GB (full)/21GB (Japan)

Himawari L1 Gridded Data (JAXA NetCDF format)Reflectance (6CH) & brightness temperature (10CH)

0.02/0.05deg. (full)/0.01deg. (Japan) 10min NetCDF4 73GB(0.02deg.)/15GB(0.05deg.)

(full) / 7GB (Japan)

Level 2 and 3

AtmosphereAerosol properties 5km 10min/1hr/1dy/

1month NetCDF4 600MB(10min)/180MB(hr)/92MB(1dy)

Cloud properties 5km 10min NetCDF4 2GB

OceanSea surface temperature 2km 10min/1hr/1dy/

1month NetCDF4 4GB(10min)/1.3GB(1hr)/128MB(1dy)

Ocean color (Chlorophyll-a) 5km (full)/1km (Japan) 1hr/1dy/1month NetCDF4 170MB(1hr)/40MB(1dy)(full)

Land Wild fire 2km (10min/1hr/1dy)/0.25deg. (1month)

10min/1hr/1dy/1month CSV (text) 3.3MB(10min)/1.5MB(1hr)/0.3MB(1

dy)

RadiationPhotosynthetically active radiation & shortwave radiation

5km (full)/1km (Japan)

10min/1hr/1dy/1month NetCDF4 300MB(10min)/660MB(1hr)/45MB(

1dy)

Photovoltaic power (image only) 1km/4km 10min - -

Level 4 (Satellite-assimilated model outputs)

ModelAerosol properties ~0.37deg. (global) 1hr

NetCDF4120MB

Sea surface temperature ~1/36deg. (Japan) 1hr with forecast 25MB

(https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/ptree)

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JAXA’s Open and Free EO Data and ServicesPortal Name and URL

G-PortalProvides products of GPM, GCOM-W, GCOM-C, GOSAT, and Past Satellites and Sensors (MOS-1/1b, JERS-1, ADEOS, ADEOS-II, Aqua/AMSR-E, TRMM/PR) https://gportal.jaxa.jp/gpr/ (Contacts : z-gportal-support@ml.jaxa.jp)

GSMaP: Global Satellite Mapping of PrecipitationProvides hourly Global Rainfall Map in Near-Real-Time (GSMaP_NRT), available four hours after observation. (GPM-Core GMI, TRMM TMI, GCOM-W1 AMSR2, DMSP series SSMIS, NOAA series AMSU, MetOp series AMSU, and Geostationary IR)https://sharaku.eorc.jaxa.jp/GSMaP/(Contacts : z-trmm_real@ml.jaxa.jp)

JAXA Himawari Monitor Provides multi-satellite products from the Himawari Standard Data provided by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) as well as the geophysical parameter data (Aerosol Optical Thickness, Sea Surface Temperature, Short Wave Radiation, Chlorophyll-a, Wild Fire, Photovoltaic Power, Cloud Optical Thickness and Cloud Type) produced by JAXA. https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/ptree/(Contacts : z-ptree@ml.jaxa.jp)

GDAS: GOSAT Data Archive Service (Operated by National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES))Provides GOSAT products (Methane and CO2). https://data2.gosat.nies.go.jp/index_en.html(Contacts: gosat-support@nies.go.jp) 15