Program Activity Two visiting researchers are staying with us. Prof. Bhaskar Rao, a director of meteorology and oceanography at Andra University, India is staying in our program since September for six months. He is a leading expert on various fields such as cumulus cloud parametarization, simulation of tropical cyclone, and Asian Monsoon. As an expert on numerical modeling, in order to elucidate the climate prediction, he has built and improved various numerical models. In addition to the improvement of atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM), which he dedicated during his last year's stay with us, he is currently making continuous contribution for the development of regional climate models. Dr. Hendrikus Wicher Ter Maat, who has been staying with us for three months since December, is more than 2 meters height, of course the tallest researcher ever in our program. He has been conducting his research on building and developing the regional models in Africa, Brazil, and Europe in Alterra Institute, Wageningen University in Holland. In our program, he has committed to the development of connecting points for the regional models and global models for the regional prediction and its application for climate models in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, which are affected by oceanic climate variations. Both of them will be staying us till the cherry blossom season, and we foresee the great contribution from the two. Report of the fall meeting of American Geophysical Union (AGU) by Rikie Suzuki. I have participated in the fall meeting of AGU held in San Francisco from 6 to 10 December 2002. When I checked the news in Japan from the free wireless LAN in the corner of the hall, it seemed that they had a heavy snow in Kanto Area, which was unusual for this season. I then appreciated the fact that I was at San Francisco, which has relatively warm winter by locating in the Mediterranean climate. The photo is the hall for the poster session, in which free beers were provided. The huge hall was divided into specific scientific fields. It was very impressive for me that apart from traditional specialized fields, there were noticeable amount of new studies, cross-cutting among the different areas. Presenters stood in front of each poster, and active discussions were held all over the hall. My main interest was the condition of the global vegetation. Various challenging researches based on the vegetation distribution data obtained from earth observation satellite, etc, have been carried out, and I was able to obtain useful information for our newest research trend.
		The Carbon Cycle Research Group is conducting tracer experiments using high-resolution ocean general circulation models (OGCM). Carbon dioxide absorbed in the ocean is not only transported by large-scale ocean circulation, but also re-distributed by western boundary currents and mesoscale eddies. Therefore, it is important to understand its behavior. So far, by an idealized tracer experiment using the model with resolution of 0.25 degree longitude and latitude, we have found that the large vertical mixing is induced by eddy activity in the deep ocean and materials absorbed in the high latitude area are transported to the tropical region not only in the interior ocean but also by the western boundary currents. These results were presented in some science meetings. Currently, we have started a new experiment with the chlorofluorocarbon as a tracer using the super high-resolution model (horizontal 0.1 degree) developed jointly by the Climate Variation Research Program and the Earth Simulator Center, which will make us possible to study more detailed transportation process. Using the Earth Simulator, we are expecting new progress for our research on not only for the physical process but also for the material transport in the ocean. A task team for atmospheric composition observation has been founded within the atmospheric composition research program. The observational work, which is a part of Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Research Revolution 2002 project, will focus on two topics, the long-term observation of large-scale air pollution in East Asia and intensive observation of the atmospheric radical species. Here we would like to introduce the long-term observation. As a result of fast economic growth in East Asia, massive amounts of air pollution, including those having direct impact on global warming, natural environment change, agricultural production loss, and human health, are being released into the atmosphere and are predicted to continue increasing. The study of the long-term variation of such large-scale air pollution in this region and the process and mechanism controlling such variations are in urgent need. Starting from the end of this fiscal year, continuous monitoring of ozone and carbon monoxide will be carried out in the highly populated region of China. The observation of background conditions of these species in remote Siberia will also be made. The observation results would give us the new information that helps validate and improve the atmospheric chemical-transport modeling and strengthen the capability to predict the status of air pollution in the future.