At the UNIT Leader’s Meeting of the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) held on April 7th, 2004,“GOSAT Research Team”
was newly authorized.GOSAT (Greenhouse Gases Observing SATellite) is a satellite developed by Japan to monitor the distribution of carbon dioxide (CO2) globally from orbit, and is scheduled to be launched in 2008.
It is a joint project of the Ministry of the Environment (MOE), the Japan Aerospace Agency (JAXA), and the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES).
NIES is responsible for the algorithm improvement of the satellite data analysis and utilization of the data, as well as to give appropriate advice to specifications of sensor of the Short Wavelength Infrared (SWIR) region to JAXA.
| Chairman | Dr. Shuzo Nishioka (Executive Director, CGER) |
| Team Leader | Dr．Gen Inoue (Director, CGER) |
| Team Members | Dr. Tatsuya Yokota (Section Leader) |
| Dr. Hiroyuki Oguma (Senior Researcher) | |
| Dr. Akiko Higurashi (Senior Researcher) | |
| Dr. Isamu Morino (Senior Researcher) |
Further, since April 2004, we have Dr. Tadao Aoki (from Meteorological Institute) as a NIES Fellow and Ms. Keiko Ueki as a secretary who will be in charge of the secretariat of the Team. To estimate CO2 with high precision by satellite observation, NIES will also carry out ground-based and air-borne validation experiments in near future.