We have fabricated a trial product of an oxide thermoelectric module using the perovskite cobalt oxides. The thermoelectric properties of the p- and n-leg materials are carefully controlled, and the room temperature thermopower is set to be larger than 200 μV/K. This module generates an open circuit voltage of 1.0 V with a small temperature difference of 170 K. At a large temperature difference of 399 K, it generates a substantial power of 40 mW, and the generated energy density is comparable with that of commercial solar cells.

The thermal infrared band of the main sensor of the greenhouse gas observing satellite (GOSAT), the TANSO-FTS, must be calibrated with accuracy higher than 0.3 K in the brightness temperature T bb for retrieving CO 2 concentration with accuracy of 1% in the upper atmosphere. However, that accuracy has not been achieved because of some error sources. One is the systematic bias in the radiance spectrum resulting from effects of radiation emitted from internal optics and multiple scattering of target signals. Another is the polarization effect of the pointing mirror. Both effects can be merged into two parameters, gain and offset, in the two point calibration procedure. They can be tuned by comparing the spectrum with well-calibrated spectra such as those from the AIRS sensor. Based on the corrected radiance spectra, global CO 2 concentrations were processed. However, they show peculiar latitudinal distribution implying the existence of temporally variant parameters that can affect the calibration. This bias can be reduced by referring to housekeeping data of the satellite in the calibration procedure. The stratospheric ozone distribution is also analyzed. The sensor demonstrated the difference in the ozone hole feature between spring 2009 and 2010 over the South Pole.