Dr. K. Takaya received the Yamamoto-Syouno Award from Meteorological Society of Japan in 2002 for a paper entitled "A Formulation of a Phase-Independent Wave-Activity Flux for Stationary and Migratory Quasigeostrophic Eddies on a Zonally Varying Basic Flow". "Wave-activity" fluxes proposed in previous studies have not been able to correctly represent snapshot features of threedimensional Rossby wavepacket propagation embedded on a zonallyasymmetric basic flow, which could have strongly affected weather conditions. In the paper, he defined a new "wave-activity" to formulate a new wave-activity flux, which can depict such snapshot propagation. This formulation will greatly contribute to the theoretical extensions of geostrophical fluid dynamics. Moreover, this new flux has been a useful diagnostic tool to analyze observed and numerical data in the mid-latitude atmosphere. Actually, the flux has been used for monthly report on climate system of Japan Meteorological Agency for more than three years and its usefulness has been highly appreciated.

Yasunari, Kimura, Fujiyoshi, Masuda, and Oki participated the meeting on the GAME International Scientific Panel held on 6-7 November in Tokyo. It has been decided to organize a meeting on regional climate modeling related to Monsoon, and to collect and share of 5-year climate data from 1997-2001 to discuss the annual variation. From 29-30 October, Yasunari, Masuda, and Oki joined the Workshop on GAME-Tropics (Chiang Rai, Thailand). Topics emphasized include science basis for water resource prediction, and capacity building of researchers in Asia.

From 30 September to 1 October, Oki and Motoya participated in the Kick-off Workshop on Global Soil Wetness Project (GSWP). Many discussions were made on the model inter-comparison by the land surface process simulation using the common input dataset, and the strategy for a longer-term simulation in the next phase of GSWP. At the International Conference on mesoscale convective systems and heavy rainfall/snowfall in East Asia held on 29-31 October in Tokyo, Nakamura presented simulation results on mesoscale disturbances observed in the Meiyu Frontal Zone.

We would like to introduce Dr. Wing-Le Chan, a researcher in the Paleoclimate Group.

My main interests originally lay in the numerical modeling of stellar atmospheres, including simple radiative and convective processes, which I carried out while I was at the University of London. Since working in Japan, my field of research has become much closer to home. As a member of the paleoclimate group within the Global Warming Research Program, I have been studying the effects of changes in saline water input to the North Atlantic resulting from land changes on global climate. A geophysical fluid dynamics laboratory (GFDL) coupled atmosphereocean model, comprising of an R15 atmospheric model and a Cox ocean model, has enabled our team to obtain experimental data spanning several thousands of years for various sensitivity experiments within a reasonable amount of time. In particular, I am investigating the separate roles of the Mediterranean outflow water and the Agulhas Current in the maintenance of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation and their influences on global ocean circulation and climate.

Report by Drs. Prabir K. Patra and Shamil Maksyutov.

In the Greenhouse Gases Modeling Group, we are aiming to estimate the regional fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) by using the information from atmospheric data and its variability. Since most of the present CO₂ measurement stations are located to keep track of the long-term background changes, the inverse model estimates of surface fluxes are not well determined on the regional scale. Our attention is focused on improving present measurement network of CO₂ optimally for better regional source distribution. Such study is also recommended to observe the changes occurring under the Kyoto Protocol for mitigating the anthropogenic component of greenhouse gas emission, while increasing the terrestrial CO₂ uptake in biomass. The implementation of optimal network simulation is generally probabilistic and computer-time consuming at present. We have introduced "incremental" optimization technique to study the dearth in currently operating CO₂ measurement network and propose possible extensions in order to estimate regional fluxes of CO₂ with greater confidence using inverse models. We have identified that the continental South America, Africa and some parts of Asia require more CO₂ observations. Since new algorithm is less computer-time demanding, fifteen transport models are utilized in the inverse model calculations. This helps reducing uncertainties in the optimal extensions due to the inaccuracies in model transport. These results are in use while selecting the new observation sites under the recently funded CO₂ observation projects.