In 2009 the satellite instruments OCO and GOSAT will be launched, which promise a revolutionary improvement in our ability to monitor the greenhouse gases CO2 and CH4. To date, significant uncertainties remain in our understanding of the global cycles of CO2 and CH4. As a consequence, for example, many of the observed year-to-year changes in the atmospheric growth rate of these gases are poorly understood. The large number of measurements and global coverage as provided by satellite instruments could significantly accelerate progress in process understanding, which is urgently needed to understand the atmospheric evolution of CO2 and CH4, and prerequisite to climate change prediction.

This session is open to contributions related to all aspects of remote sensing of the greenhouse gases CO2 and CH4 from current (e.g., SCIAMACHY, AIRS, IASI) and upcoming missions, with particular interest in the status and first results of OCO and GOSAT. We welcome studies on retrieval algorithms and data analysis, on the validation and interpretation of remotely-sensed greenhouse gas observations and modelling studies that use satellite data e.g. for the inversion of surface fluxes.