About GCOM

The Global Change Observation Mission (GCOM) is planned as the comprehensive observation system of the Earth System's essential variables of atmosphere, ocean, land, cryosphere, and ecosystem. Most of these observations are expected to provide data commonly useful to the climate research and the meteorology. Additionally, the mission is designed to find out the traces of human-induced environmental changes, such as deforestations, forest fires, air and water quality changes to distinguish the human-induced changes and the natural cyclic changes. GCOM will take over the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite-II (ADEOS-II) mission and transition into long-term monitoring of the Earth.

To achieve global, comprehensive, long-term, and homogeneous observation, GCOM will consist of two satellite types and three consecutive generations with a one-year overlap, resulting in over a 13-year observation period. The two satellites are GCOM-W (Water) and GCOM-C (Climate). The GCOM-W satellite will carry the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) to contribute to the understanding of the global water and energy cycle. The GCOM-C satellite will be equipped with the Second-generation Global Imager (SGLI) to observe the Earth's atmosphere and surface in order to contribute to the understanding of the carbon cycle and radiation budget.

GCOM System

GCOM-C

GCOM-W