Update on GOSAT TANSO-FTS performance, operations, and data products after more than 6 years in space

A data set containing more than 6 years (February 2009 to present) of radiancespectra for carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and methane (CH 4 ) observations has been acquired by the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT, available at http://data.gosat.nies.go.jp/GosatUserInterfaceGateway/guig/GuigPage/open.do ), nicknamed “Ibuki”, Thermal And Near infrared Sensor for carbon Observation Fourier Transform Spectrometer (TANSO-FTS). This paper provides updates on the performance of the satellite and TANSO-FTS sensor and describes important changes to the data product, which has recently been made available to users. With these changes the typical accuracy of retrieved column-averaged dry air mole fractions of CO 2 and CH 4 (X CO 2 and X CH 4 , respectively) are 2 ppm or 0.5 % and 13 ppb or 0.7 %, respectively. Three major anomalies of the satellite systemaffecting TANSO-FTS are reported: a failure of one of the two solar paddlesin May 2014, a switch to the secondary pointing system in January 2015, and most recently a cryocoolershutdown and restart in August 2015. The Level 1A (L1A) (raw interferogram) and the Level 1B (L1B) ( radiancespectra) of version V201 described here have long-term uniform quality and provide consistent retrieval accuracy even after the satellite systemanomalies. In addition, we discuss the unique observation abilities of GOSAT made possible by an agile pointing mechanism, which allows for optimization of global sampling patterns.