Workshop Objectives

The aim of the workshop is to discuss new results and to promote and coordinate the international initiatives in the field of Earth observations from space with FTS instrumentation. The FTS technique, even if of complex implementation on space platforms, provides comprehensive and accurate observations of the Earth atmosphere that have revolutionised this research field in the last few years. With these instruments it is now possible to produce daily 3D images of the atmospheric composition with horizontal and vertical details that allow the development and the validation of new chemical and climate models with increasing accuracy.

Workshop History

The workshop is held every two years. The early workshops were a meeting opportunity for the groups working with FTS instruments operating on stratospheric platforms. Basically, these workshops were the occasion to identifying and promoting the possibility of using FTS on space platforms.

Apart a few preliminary flights on the Space Shuttle, only recently FTS instruments are being used systematically from space. This workshop has been the main discussion forum to identify and to overcome the technological difficulties that were an obstacle for space applications.

The following FTS instruments are currently operating from space:

- MIPAS on the European satellite Envisat (ESA, launched in 2002),

- ACE on the Canadian satellite SciSat-1 (CSA, launched in 2003),

- TES on the American satellite Aura (NASA, launched in 2004),

- IASI on the European satellite MetOp-A (Eumetsat, launched in 2006),

The new Japanese satellite GOSAT will be soon launched (JAXA, 2008-09) for the characterisation of sources and sinks of atmospheric greenhouse gasses.

Among other issues, the new experimental challenges that the workshop will be addressing are the determination of new parameters that are difficult to observe from space (such as for instance the atmospheric gradients which characterise the processes of emission and absorption of greenhouse gasses), and the procedures for a complete exploitation of the great quantity of data that are delivered by operational satellites.