GCOM (Global Change Observation Mission) is a project for the global and long-term observation of the Earth environment. GCOM is playing an important role in monitoring global water circulation and climate change. GCOM consists of two satellite series, GCOM-W and GCOM-C. GCOM-W carries the AMSR2 (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2), an instrument to observe water-related targets such as precipitation, water vapor, sea surface wind speed, sea surface temperature, soil moisture, and snow depth. GCOM-C carries the SGLI (Second Generation Global Imager), an instrument for surface and atmospheric measurements of phenomena involved in the carbon cycle and radiation budget, such as clouds, aerosol, ocean color, vegetation, and snow and ice, and will be launched sometime in 2016.
"SHIZUKU"(GCOM-W1) is the first satellite of the GCOM-W series. The SHIZUKU was launched on May 18, 2012 from the Tanegashima Space Center and started regular observations by the onboard sensor, Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2), on July 3 after entering into the A-train orbit on June 29. The AMSR2 is a successor to the AMSR on Japanese ADEOS-II and the AMSR-E on Aqua, a NASA satellite. For more information on the GCOM-W1 mission please visit JAXA GCOM-W1 website: http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gcom_w/index_e.html.
The NOAA Operational GCOM-W1 AMSR-2 Products System (NOGAPS) is developed to process GCOM data and generate NOAA unique operational products for users. It ingests GCOM-W1 AMSR-2 RDRs and generates L1B products with software provided by JAXA and generates L2 products using the GCOM-W1 AMSR2 Algorithm Software Package (GAASP) provided by NESDIS STAR. Both L1 and L2 products are distributed to users through the ESPC NDE system. The NOAA unique L2 products include: calibrated microwave brightness temperatures, rainfall rate, sea surface temperature, sea surface wind speed, total precipitable water, cloud liquid water, soil moisture, snow cover, snow depth, snow water equivalent, and sea ice. The GCOM-W1 data and products are being utilized by NOAA users for improving numerical weather prediction, precipitation and tropical cyclone location, intensity analysis, and monitoring.
The NOAA STAR team has developed the L2 algorithms based on proven methodologies from other passive microwave sensors, most notably AMSR-E and WindSat. The ocean products (SST, surface wind speed, cloud liquid water and total precipitable water) are retrieved simultaneously through a Bayesian inversion scheme. The rain rate/type algorithm employs the Goddard Profiling Algorithm (GPROF) which has its legacy through AMSR-E, TMI and GPM, but has been updated to improve the rain/no-rain discrimination. The snow, ice and soil moisture products also adopt legacy approaches developed mostly for SSM/I, AMSR- E and TMI.
