Cloud observations from the future Japanese satellite missions

摘要

The paper presents the present status, scientific tentative results, plan of the future Japanese satellite missions related to the cloud sciences. There are three missions that will contribute to the cloud observations; GOSAT, EarthCARE, and GCOM-C (-W). Among the sensors aboard the satellites, we focus on the multi-spectral imagers. Each imager has different number of bands and observation swath according to the primary objectives. A principal aim of the CAI/GOSAT, for the cloud application, is providing the cloud screening to mitigate the uncertainty of CO_2 retrieval by the FTS aboard the GOSAT. The MSI/EarthCARE will observe quasi-3D field of clouds together with active sensors, CPR and ATLID. The SGLI/GCOM-C, the follow-on mission of GLI/ADES-II, is the most precision imager among all Japanese future multi-spectral imagers. It has 19 bands from 380nm to 12um, two of polarization bands.