Tropical Cyclogenesis and Ecoinformatics Methods - New Ecoinformatics Tools in Environmental Science: Applications and Decision-making - page 602

Global Change Observation Mission (GCOM) directly relates to retrieval
algorithms for geophysical products, product validation, and data application.
GCOM seeks to establish and demonstrate a global, long-term satellite observing
system. Essential geophysical parameters have to be measured for understanding
the global climate change and water cycle mechanism, and eventually contribute to
improving future climate projection through a collaborative framework with climate
model institutions. Demonstrating capabilities of operational applications providing
continuous data to operational agencies is another important purpose. GCOM will
take over the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite-II (ADEOS-II) mission and
transition into long-term monitoring of the Earth. GCOM will consist of two
satellite types and three consecutive generations with a one-year overlap, resulting
in over a 13-year observation period in order to achieve a global, comprehensive,
long-term, and homogeneous observation. The two satellites are GCOM-W and
GCOM-C (Climate). The GCOM-W1 satellite will carry the Advanced Microwave
Scanning Radiometer-2 (AMSR2) to contribute to understanding the water and
energy cycle. The GCOM-C1 satellite will be equipped with the Second-generation
Global Imager (SGLI) to observe the Earth s atmosphere and surface for contrib-

uting to the understanding of the carbon cycle and radiation budget (GCOM 2008).
There are numerous data sources about the atmospheric and oceanic processes
which can be used for the decision making related to the OSE state. The basic
purposes of the most of global Earth observing systems consist in the predicting
climate change. For realistic prediction of climate change, these data and oceanic
and atmospheric models must be coupled. It is evident that oceanic processes exert
a major in

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uence on climate. Moreover, sea-surface temperature determines the
heat exchange between the atmosphere and oceans. In order to assess the OSE state,
results from different Earth observing systems and general circulation models have
to be processed. According to Cracknell et al. (2009), the OSE state is characterized
by instable dynamics of its components and therefore it is impossible to use
monitoring data because of their temporal incompleteness. In this sense, data of
numerous meteorological stations such as The Tropical Atmosphere Ocean/TRI-
angle Trans-Ocean buoy Network & PIlot Research moored Array in the Tropical
Atlantic/Research moored Array for Monsoon Analysis (TAO/TRITON&PIRATA/
RAMA) are more acceptable (Fig. 7.11 ).
The Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) and Global Ocean Observing
System (GOOS) (Fig. 7.12 and Table 7.7 ) deliver large amounts of archive and
operative data about different environmental characteristics on a global basis. TAO/
TRITON/PIRATA/RAMA is one ef

fl

cient sub-system of these systems. Namely,
the data of this sub-system are the most precise and informative.
Table 7.8 describes the data that are employed in this study. More precisely this
data set is based on the archived data of the TAO/TRITON&PIRATA system for the
months of hurricane activity. The basic goal of the data processing is to search for a
procedure and a criterion to determine with high probability the time at which the
hurricane arises and the conditions that precede that event. The tropical moored
buoys that deliver many data about different meteorological and geophysical char-
acteristics of the ocean-atmosphere system are located in the Paci c and Atlantic