地球温暖化などの地球環境変動の問題は地球惑星科学全体にわたる課題であり、その課題解決には、数値モデルによる予測技術のみならず、監視的要素を持つ観測やプロセス解明のための観測のさらなる発展が必須である．航空機観測は，即時性・直接性といった高い観測の⾃由度を有するとともに，⼈⼯衛星や地上観測ではなし得ない観測が行える。また、最近では無人航空機による観測需要も急速に高まっている。近年，温室効果気体の濃度やエアロゾル・雲の粒径分布・化学組成などのミクロな量の「その場観測」や台⾵や森林など「リモートセンシング」において航空機観測の重要性が再認識され、さらに測地・⽕⼭・地震等へ無人機を応用する新たな動きも見られる。現在我が国には観測に特化した航空機が存在しない状況を打破するため、日本学術会議のマスタープラン2020では「航空機観測による気候・地球システム科学研究の推進」が重点課題に採択された。航空機観測を推進させるためには地球惑星科学分野を始めとする研究者のさらなる連携が必要である。本セッションでは、航空機や無人機観測による最新の研究成果を報告するとともに、航空機観測の推進に関する議論を行う。

The global climate change, especially for global warming is one of the most important issue throughout the Earth and planetary sciences.  To confront this problem, progresses of the observations both for continuous monitoring of the Earth and for the process studies as well as the numerical climate modeling become more important. Aircraft observation has the great advantages on the promptness/timeliness and direct (in-situ) observation which cannot be achieved by Earth observing satellites or ground-based observations.  Recently, the importance of aircraft observation is increasing in "in-situ measurements" such as concentration of greenhouse gases, aerosol and cloud particle size distribution, and chemical composition, and "remote sensing" such as three-dimensional observation of typhoons and observation on forests and vegetation for better understanding of the detailed process of the global warming and its impacts on the global climate and weather.  In addition, the application of aircraft observation including the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to geodesy, studies on earthquakes and volcanos are also progressing.  However, the research aircraft to conduct operational and/or extensive observations to fulfill the requirements not exist in Japan at the present time even though the aircraft observations technologies in Japan have been leading the world.  Under this situation, the Science Council of Japan selected the proposal "Promotion of Scientific Research on Climate and Earth System Sciences Using Aircrafts" as high priority program.  In order to promote more comprehensive/extensive researches by the aircraft observations, it is necessary to have close collaborations among researchers. In this session, we will discuss the future promotion of aircraft and UAV observation through the latest research results using aircraft.