Purpose of the Symposium

The meeting was organised by the National Space Agency of Japan (NASDA) for the presentation of research results from the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS), and for presentation of ADEOS-II PI's progress with their algorithm and research activities. As a PI on ADEOS and ADEOS-II, NASDA required my attendance at this meeting.

Organisation of the Symposium

The meetings consisted of plenary and parallel sessions arranged by discipline (cryosphere, land science, atmosphere, oceans, etc.), by instrument (GLI, IMG, ILAS, etc.) and by theme (Cal/Val, Hardware, Data policy, etc.). Meetings started at 08:50 on all days and on three days continued until after 20:30. English was used as the language for presentations, but the usual difficulties with understanding detailed questions and answers invariably meant that some discussion was
repeated in Japanese and this often prolonged the talks.

The symposium took place at the Kyoto Conference Centre, about 20 minutes by subway from central Kyoto, where most participants were accommodated. In my case all travelling expences and accommodation costs were paid by NASDA. Other expenses (meals, incidentals etc.) were paid through my NASDA contract account, including my full salary costs (6 days). Thus there were no net costs to CAR.

Meeting Summary

1. The ADEOS-II plenary began with outline talks on the progress with instrument development, testing and performance. An informal announcement was made that the launch of ADEOS-II will be delayed (perhaps by as much as 18 months) due to the failed launch of the H-II rocket carrying MTSAT.

2. The GLI session (I am a PI for this instrument) reports were all good with excellent progress made on both hardware and software developments. The Project Scientist (Prof. T. Nakajima) has established a network of cal/val sites in Japan, China and Thailand and has instrumented two ships; one of which will regularly transect southern ocean waters around Australia.

3. The EOS Project Scientist (Dr. Mike King) gave a presentation on the EOS-AM platform (renamed Terra) confirming the imminent launch date of 16 December, 1999. He outlined the preparedness for the mission and described the cal/val activities, including the main experiment - SAFARI, to be held in South Africa between September and November, 2000.

4. The NASDA Project scientists also described the new GCOM A and B, ADEOS follow-on missions, which will endeavor to collect 15 years of important satellite data-sets for climate applications. The continuity of these NASDA Earth observations will provide a valuable data resource for Australian climate scientists and it is important for CSIRO to maintain an involvement in these missions.

5. I made a presentation on CAR contract work (GLI global radiation budget algorithms) which attracted a substantial audience (including both the GLI Project Scientist and the EOS-AM Project Scientist). The majority of my talk was based on the SRB algorithms and their validation, but I was able to spend some time reporting on Peter Turner's progress with compositing continental satellite data and cloud detection algorithms and Ian Grant's progress with surface albedo
research. There is some scope here for a better integration of Ian’s work into the ADEOS-II contract and I shall discuss this further with Ian and David Jupp.

6. I attended some of the Mutsu Bay Experiment (MUBEX) special workshop, which included several presentations on the use and development of IR radiometry. Ian Barton gave a talk in this session on his latest SST research and spoke on the CAR scanning radiometer, recently used on a Franklin cruise.

7. I had several useful discussions with ADEOS-II cal/val scientists, including Prof. Honda who is running the core ADEOS-II field site in Mongolia. There are some possibilities of greater collaboration with Prof. Honda which may lead to better cal/val coordination, development of measurement protocols and some new funding. I also talked with Dr Steve Ackerman on his cloud detection scheme for MODIS. He is keen to collaborate with us to establish some validation of the MODIS algorithms in Australia. This will be discussed in more detail with Peter Turner.

8. I attended some of the ILAS team meetings and collected abstracts of talks on aspects of atmospheric chemistry of relevance to CAR. Please see me for further details.

Conclusion

The meetings at this Symposium concentrated on the R&D for the ADEOS and ADEOS-II satellite systems. CAR has received significant benefit from the ADEOS program through funding, scientific recognition and access to new and useful research data-sets. The ADEOS-II contract is expected to run for up to 2 years after launch, or about 4 years in total from now. The value of the contract is currently US$40K per year, but this amount could either increase or decrease depending on NASDA's funding and its policy toward foreign investigators. The value of the science generated from these missions is more difficult to assess, but without involvement we cannot benefit at all. The recognition of CSIRO science in this international forum is of substantial value.