EUMETSAT, Japanese space agency to cooperate on greenhouse gas monitoring

TUESDAY, 14 MAY 2019
Mr Kazuo Tachi, on behalf of the Director General of JAXA’s Space Technology Directorate 1 Ryoichi Imai, and EUMETSAT Director-General Alain Ratier signed the agreement at a ceremony at EUMETSAT’s Darmstadt headquarters today.

Japan’s Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) was the world’s first satellite mission specifically designed for monitoring greenhouse gases. Instruments on the low-Earth-orbiting satellite measure carbon dioxide and methane for a decade. GOSAT-2 was launched in October as the successor to GOSAT.

“This cooperation with EUMETSAT is crucial to promote the satellite data to support improving national greenhouse gases inventories reports as well as precise understanding of the status of global greenhouse gases,” Tachi said. “JAXA also would like to enhance GOSAT and GOSAT-2 data utilisation in weather forecasting operations through cooperation with EUMETSAT.”

Under the agreement signed today, GOSAT and GOSAT-2 measurements will be calibrated against measurements taken by the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) on EUMETSAT’s three Metop satellites.

EUMETSAT will make the data from a series of GOSAT satellites operationally available to its users, the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), in particular.

“The agreement between EUMETSAT and JAXA will support the implementation of the international part of the agreed European Roadmap Towards an Operational CO2 Monitoring System, which is essential for deepening understanding of climate change,” Ratier said.