Our geosciences affect our communities in many ways, especially the coastal communities. Our coastal environment has been degrading through beach erosion, plastic waste and other pollutants. Along with bleaching of reefs, these conditions have negatively impacted and sometimes endangered marine wildlife and coastal communities. Sea level changes are also affecting the coasts and coastal communities. Typically, scientists work in isolation, with little interaction with non-scientists. This panel will bring coastal scientists together with non-scientists (i.e. economists, engineers, public policy makers, insurers) working in industries affected by climate change in order to bridge this gap. We hope that this will lead to future collaborations and data exchanges for everyone’s benefits.

Recently climate change has been resulting in disastrous ways, impacting communities globally, through stronger storms, stronger cyclones, higher sea level, floods, droughts, wildfires, and other events. Typically, scientists work in isolation, with little interaction with non-scientists. This panel will bring climate scientists together with non-scientists (i.e. economists, engineers, public policy makers, insurers) working in industries affected by climate change in order to bridge this gap. We hope that this will lead to future collaborations and data exchanges for everyone’s benefits.

The world’s space and/or environment agencies are making unprecedented contributions to studies of the Earth as an integrated system through a combination of new and existing observations that are providing an ever-expanding set of observations about the Earth’s interacting atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere, land surface, and interior. Advances in both operational and research satellites are making a significant impact on both scientific understanding and forecasting, thus contributing to societal benefits in many areas. In this session, a summary of status, accomplishments, and plans of several of the space agencies engaged in using the vantage point of space to study the Earth system and to turn the resulting knowledge into scientifically and societally useful products.

NASA EARTH SCIENCE DIVISION PROGRAM
Jack KAYE, Associate Director for Research National Aeronautics and Space Administration

FENGYUN METEOROLOGICAL SATELLITE PROGRAMS AND APPLICATIONS
Na XU, Director for National Satellite Meteorological Center

JAXA’S EARTH OBSERVATION MISSION
Shinichi SOBUE, ALOS-2 Project Manager Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Space-borne Atmospheric Environment Monitoring Program of Korea: GEMS and Beyond
Jhoon KIM, GEMS Principal Investigator Professor of Atmospheric Science Yonsei University

NOAA REMOTE SENSING SATELLITE OBSERVATIONS OF THE EARTH: DATA AND INFORMATION FOR SOCIETAL BENEFIT
Douglas HOWARD, Director of the Center for Satellite Applications and Research National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration

The development of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) was initiated 20 years ago by a small group of broad-minded Earth and space scientists who felt the necessity of promoting scientific cooperation and dialogue in the Asia-Oceania region. From a fruitful partnership with Meeting Matters International (Meet Matt), the membership of our Singapore-based organization has grown from a modest beginning of 983 members made up of 48 nationalities to 11,367 members comprising 79 nationalities. Together with AGU and EGU, AOGS is now one of the three major international societies dedicated to geosciences, and the one with both the widest geographical distribution and the largest scientific population. The bottom-up approach in structure and scientific program is fundamental to the growth of our Society. The annual meetings in different Asia-Pacific cities outside Singapore are important in furthering capacity building and scientific networking. With the emergence of a new generation of geoscientists who have established lasting friendships and continue to cultivate the cooperative spirit of AOGS, we look forward to the next twenty years. Please join us for this colloquium, which will reflect back fondly on our Society's past achievements and discuss our ambitions ahead.

The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission will continue NASA’s multi-decade record of satellite ocean color, cloud, and aerosol particle observations. Anticipated to launch in early 2024, PACE is a strategic climate continuity mission that will enable new insight into oceanographic and atmospheric responses to Earth's changing climate. PACE’s primary instrument is a global spectrometer that spans the ultraviolet to near-infrared region in 2.5 nm steps and also includes seven discrete shortwave infrared bands from 940 to 2260 nm. This leap in technology will enable improved understanding of aquatic ecosystems and biogeochemistry, as well as provide new information on phytoplankton community composition and improved detection of algal blooms. This, in combination with its aerosol and cloud measurements, will enable improved assessment of aerosol impacts on ocean biology and chemistry. PACE data is anticipated to provide new and improved applications such as better quantification of Earth’s energy budget, more accurate forecasting of harmful algal blooms, aid fisheries management and monitor ocean health. To ensure that PACE data is of the quality needed for its different applications, there are a number of validation activities planned post-launch. This session will discuss the scientific and technological advances that the PACE mission brings to the community, the opportunities that exist to support calibration/validation, including synergistic in situ and satellite measurements, and the breadth of applications that will be enabled by PACE data, in particular focused on the AOGS region. It is anticipated that the PACE instrument suite will substantially advance studies of global biogeochemistry, carbon cycle, and aerosols/clouds in the ocean-atmosphere system.

Interested parties may sign up via MARS Registration Form from 21 March 2023 onwards. Sign-ups will close when maximum participant capacity is reached.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors aboard NASA’s Earth Observing Satellites (EOS) have been observing the earth-atmosphere system for more than two decades. Atmospheric aerosols (particulate matter) play an important role in the earth radiation budget and contribute to air pollution. Since its launch, the “dark-target” (DT) aerosol retrieval algorithm has been applied to MODIS to retrieve aerosol optical depth (AOD) and other aerosol properties on a global scale. The AOD data product has been extensively used for climate and air quality applications. The DT algorithm has been applied to a new generation of sensors such as Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi-NPP, and the Advanced Himawari and Baseline Imagers (AHI and ABI) on Himawari-8 and GOES-R. The application of a consistent algorithm on multiple Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) and GEOstationary (GEO) sensors is key for observing aerosols with high temporal and spatial resolution.

The AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) project is a federation of ground-based remote sensing aerosol networks established by NASA and PHOTONS (PHOtométrie pour le Traitement Opérationnel de Normalisation Satellitaire; Univ. of Lille 1, CNES, and CNRS-INSU) and is greatly expanded by networks (e.g., RIMA, AeroSpan, AEROCAN, NEON, and CARSNET) and collaborators from national agencies, institutes, universities, individual scientists, and partners. For more than 25 years, the project has provided long-term, continuous, and readily accessible public domain database of aerosol optical, microphysical and radiative properties for aerosol research and characterization, validation of satellite retrievals, and synergism with other databases. The network imposes standardization of instruments, calibration, processing, and distribution.

The workshop will provide lectures and hands-on exercises. Lectures will be about fundamentals of satellite atmospheric aerosol datasets, introduction to AERONET datasets, and best research practices on spatiotemporal collocation of space and ground datasets for validation studies. Hands-on exercises will be geared towards accessing data, spatiotemporal collocation, and validating against ground measurements.
All activities will use free or open-source software tools such as Python.

Interested parties may sign up via MARS Registration Form from 21 March 2023 onwards. Sign-ups will close when maximum participant capacity is reached.

Description
Come along with us to visit the birthplace of Singapore Designed Satellites at the Satellite Research Centre (SaRC). Since the 1st launch of XSAT microsatellite in 2011, SaRC has designed, built, tested and operated 10 satellites. Another 3x satellite will be launched in 2Q 2023 (you may witness the mission operation room of these 3x satellites lives). These satellites which range from 1U size (10cm x 10cm x 10cm) nanosatellite till 100+ kg microsatellite, will be communicating with NTU UHF/VHF, & S/X Band ground mission room automatically. In this lab visit, participants will get the exclusive opportunity to visit the 2 labs in SaRC:

1. SaRC-II-Mission Room – This is where satellite will be operated in full automation. In here, NTU satellite and space program will be shared and presented in the mission room.
2. SaRC-I-Satellite Integration Clean Room and Lab – This is where visitors can view SaRC’s satellites and the testing environment. A walkabout in the lab shall also introduce the various space science and technology research work from different NTU experts.

For more information on SaRC, you may visit:
https://www.ntu.edu.sg/sarc
https://www.ntu.edu.sg/sarc/research-capabilities/programmes

Description
The Centre for Climate Research Singapore (CCRS), part of the Meteorological Service Singapore, is celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2023. As a research center, CCRS aims to advance scientific understanding of how the tropical climate variability and change and its associated weather systems affects Singapore and the wider Southeast Asia Region.

During this visit, participants will get a chance to tour CCRS, learn about CCRS’ research, as well as watch the weather balloon launch (weather permitting). There will be a series of short presentations where participants will learn more about the Centre, including the latest developments of the in house SINGV model, used for weather forecasting up to climate change projections. The tour will end in the Upper Air Observatory, to check the progress (and information gathered from) the weather balloon.

This visit is targeted towards those who have a general interest in weather and/or climate and are interested to learn what is happening at CCRS.

For more information on SaRC, you may visit: http://ccrs.weather.gov.sg/

Description
The Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) was created in 2008 with the mission to conduct fundamental research on earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and climate in and around Southeast Asia, toward safer and more sustainable societies. The research done at EOS allows for better understanding of the Earth so that more accurate predictions made can allow nations to adapt in order to minimize the impact. In this visit, participants will get a chance to have a tour of EOS and sit in a presentation to learn more about the different areas of research that EOS is heavily involved in.

For more information on SaRC, you may visit: https://earthobservatory.sg/

Description
In a highly urbanized island state like Singapore, one can still find diverse marine biodiversity. One of such is the unique coral microatoll field sites present at the Southern Islands of Singapore – St. John’s Island and Lazarus Island. Coral microatolls are renowned for the precision of tracking relative sea level. These coral colonies grow near the base of the intertidal zone and are characterized by living outer perimeters with dead upper surfaces. The best microatolls have multiple concentric rings on their upper surfaces. Each ring that is produced follows a coral ‘die-down’ due to prolonged exposure at extreme low water. Differences in elevation of successive rings reflect changes in sea level as the coral grows. Field trip participants will get to visit fields of living and fossil microatolls that provide unique insights into Singapore relative sea level since the 20^th century and in the mid-Holocene. Do come prepared for heavy rain and wet feet, but also bring along a sun hat.

Participants are advised to bring along the following for this trip:

*Schedule subject to change depending on weather conditions