Research Project for Sustainable Coexistence of Human, Nature and the Earth

Research Project for Sustainable Coexistence of Human, Nature and the Earth

The above project has started as a Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)'s new strategies to promote science and technology. Dr. Matsuno will explain its background and its plan.

Taroh Matsuno
(Director-General, Frontier Research System for Global Change)

MEXT launched a new research initiative mentioned in the title. The period of the Project is 5 years starting from Fiscal Year 2002. We, Frontier Research System for Global Change (FRSGC) (JAMSTEC in this case), submitted two proposals to the MEXT, both of which were fortunately accepted and the two new projects have begun. Their brief descriptions will be given in subsequent articles in this newsletter.

The new initiative was born as part of the new movement of the Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi's Administration in the Science and Technology sector. Namely, it is included in the larger new initiative of the MEXT named "Research Revolution 2002 (RR2002)" by which research and development will be accelerated in five importance areas responding to current social needs; 1) life science, 2) information technology, 3) environment, 4) nano-technology/material science, and 5) reduction of natural disasters. They are designated at the Council for Science and Technology Policy, Cabinet Office as the government's policy except for the last one which is particular to The council for Science and Technology.

As part of the new projects of "RR2002", in "Environment" area, "Project for Sustainable Coexistence of Human, Nature, and the Earth" was launched with the following missions.

(i) "Japan Model" mission; for global warming prediction in order to contribute to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Forth Assessment in 2007. For this end, more reliable climate models will be developed. For improving various individual processes included in the models, a variety of researches (including field observations) by experts in universities shall be promoted systematically.

(ii) Water Cycle Prediction mission; in order to found the basis of season to year prediction of the state of water resources in the Asian monsoon region by enhancing our understanding of land hydrological processes and developing prediction models.

In addition to the above two missions, the project requests construction of climate data base in order to meet the requirements from the two missions.

Research Project Accepted by MEXT

Subject No.	Subject	Implementing Institute	Principal Investigator
1	Development of high resolution coupled atmosphere-ocean global circulation model	Center for Climate System Research, University of Tokyo	A. Sumi
1	Same as above	Central Research Institute for Electric Power Industry	Y. Maruyama
2	Development of integrated earth system model for global warming prediction	JAMSTEC (FRSGC)	T. Matsuno
3	Better parameterization of various physical processes for climate modeling	Institute of Industrial Science and Technology, University of Tokyo	Y. Yasuoka
3	Same as above	Graduate School of Science University of Tokyo	T. Hibiya
4	Development of high-resolution atmosphere models	AESTO collaborating with Meteorological Research Institute (MRI)	T. Matsuo (MRI)
5	Prediction of large-area hydrological cycle and advanced water resources management technology	Mitsubishi Heavy Industry, Co. collaborating with universities	H. Ueda (Kyoto University)
6	Development of models for water resources prediction and management	Yamanashi University	K. Takeuchi
7	Development of 4-D data assimilation system and construction of data base for climate research	JAMSTEC (FRSGC)	T. Awaji

In addition to the subject No. 2 and 7 below,"Observational Study on Atmospheric Composition Change in East Asia Related to Global Warming", the sub-project under Dr. Hibiya's project will be conducted by Dr. Akimoto, Director of the Atmospheric Composition Research Program at FRSGC. The project will be carried out under a task team of the Frontier Observational Reserach System for Global Change (FORSGC).

The projects which have been accepted by MEXT and about to start are as shown in the table.

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