Since early April this year, a series of severe sand and dust storms have hit the Middle East including Iraq, closing several airports, and sending thousands of people to hospitals with respiratory problems. These are images captured by GOSAT during the dust storm on 23 May 2022 (first image) and before the storm on 14 May 2022 (second image). In the first image, a massive dust storm is visible in bright yellow. For more details, please refer to: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/149838/persistent-dust-storms-batter-iraq
Column concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and carbon monoxide are being measured by the portable Fourier Transform InfraRed (FTIR) spectrometer installed at the Gobabeb Namib Research Institute in the Namib Desert, Namibia (Photo 1). Gobabeb is located in an area with almost no rainfall, surrounded by a vast desert as seen in Photos 2 and 3. Observational data of the satellite GOSAT (Ibuki) have been validated using data from ground-based observations made at various locations around the world, including the Gobabeb site. For more information about the observations in Gobabeb, please refer to the article：
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games are being held across three main game zones: Beijing, Zhangjiakou and Yanqing. As has been reported in the media, a vast amount of artificial snow is used for this winter Olympic venues. This is an image of China acquired from the observation of Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) on January 27, 2022. You can see there is almost no snow cover around all three zones.
Update: Shown is the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic site observed by GOSAT on February 14, 2022. You can see there is more snow cover than in the image observed on January 27, 2022.
The snow that fell in the Kanto region on January 6 can be clearly seen in the GOSAT-2 image the next day. The images show the Kanto region the day after it snowed (January 7) and when there was no snow (January 1).
Massive amounts of pumice pebbles spewed from the eruption of the Fukutoku-Okanoba submarine volcano in August 2021, have recently been washed ashore on islands in Okinawa and southwestern Japan, causing enormous damage. From August to September, GOSAT also captured images of pumice floating on the ocean surface around Ioto Island (Iwo Jima), which is located 1,200 km south of the Tokyo metropolitan area. There is no sign in the image of August 9, before the eruption, but gray areas can be seen in the images after August 15, indicating floating pumice. The pumice pebbles traveled more than 500 km to the west of Ioto Island in the one month period.
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In the summer of 2021, the peak of California’s wildfire season seems to arrive earlier, and as of July 11, three times more land has already burned compared to the same period last year, the worst year in California’s history of wildfire.
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Left: Forward-view image of the CAI-2 sensor onboard GOSAT-2 on April 21, 2021. The Ariake Sea (in northwestern Kyushu, Japan) and the surroundings are beautifully shining white in sunglint, the specular reflection of sunlight from the sea surface.
Right: Backward-view image of the CAI-2 sensor at almost the same time. It can be seen that the entire western Japan was widely clear at this time.
On February 16, 2021, a rapidly developed low-pressure system caused a fierce snowstorm in Northern Japan, including Hokkaido.
*Here is a photo taken from International Space Station on the same day（Twitter@Astro_Soichi )
A massive wildfire, broke out in California in August 2020, burned a total of 417,898 ha, about 1 % of California's land by the time it was extinguished in mid-November.
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Photos at The 25th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 25), the 15th session of the Conference of the Parties Serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP15) and the 2nd session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA2) held in Madrid, Spain from December 2 to 13, 2019.
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