The Tokyo Field Campaign (Tokyo-FC) is a collaborative airborne field campaign between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and
Japan's National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) with the overarching goal to validate products
retrieved by Japan's latest satellite instrument, Global Observing SATellite for Greenhouse gases and Water cycle (GOSAT-GW), launched in June 2025
With any new satellite products, validation is required to ensure the uncertainty is well characterized before enabling their use for science or applications.
Airborne measurements provide a unique perspective in being able to distinguish spatial gradients as well as quantifying emission rates around sources.
For Tokyo-FC, NASA will deploy their Langley Research Center G-III with a payload of two passive remote sensing instruments:
the GEOstationary Coastal and Air Pollution Events (GEO-CAPE) Airborne Simulator (GCAS) and Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-5 (AVIRIS-5).
These measurements will be complemented by a Diamond Air Service King Air contracted by Japan's NIES to measure in situ observations of CO2, CH4, and NO2,
as well as for testing a new NO2 remote sensor developed by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).
Deployment dates for this mission are currently planned for March-April 2026
The scientific objectives of these flights are to validate/evaluate satellite products from GOSAT-GW to ensure that they are meeting the required accuracy and precision
for their use in monitoring global atmospheric composition and constraining emissions inventories. More details can be found in the project plan link below.
Science flights will include the following strategies:
Mapping the cities of Tokyo and Nagoya with the NASA G-III to provide the highest resolution survey of trace gas emissions over the city to completement the coarser satellite perspective
Overflights and vertical profiles collected over ground reference measurements which span the country of Japan from the Pandonia Global Network
(https://pandonia-global-network.org/ )
and the TCCON networks (https://www.tccon.caltech.edu/ )
and similar sites as ground-based validation sources
