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Report
of the meeting by Dr. Hitoshi Tamura
I attended the Ocean Science Meeting held at Hawaii,
USA, from 20 to 24 February, 2006. About 3500 people
from all over the world attended this meeting to present
and discuss their latest studies focusing on ocean sciences.
From our program, eight researchers attended.
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| Recently, it is noted that
ocean current-wave interaction is one of important factors
for occurrence of "freak wave". However, because of
lack of high-resolution data for ocean current (s),
this interaction almost has not been considered for
prediction research for ocean wave. In this meeting,
we made our presentations on studies for development
of a high-resolution wave model we can consider actual
ocean current effect and our estimation of expectation
of occurrence of the "freak wave". We focused on one
case that a super big and windy typhoon passed around
Japan in late October 2004, and calculated wave height
without and with ocean current produced by JCOPE high-resolution
model, respectively. Large increase of the wave height
in the East China Sea and just over the Kuroshio current
southward of Japan and significant differences of the
wave height (maximum is about 80 cm) in the east coast
of Taiwan were confirmed associated with changes of
surface wind and direction of the Kuroshio associated
with the typhoon passing. |
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Dr. Yoshiki
Fukutomi, who has been dispatched from our Program to
IPRC in Hawaii, introduces his research activities.
I joined the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC),
School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST),
University of Hawaii in October 2005 as a Frontier visiting
assistant researcher. |
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At Frontier since 2001, I
have been studying the causes of the interannual variations
in the northern Eurasian climate and hydrological cycle.
At the IPRC, I am returning to my monsoon research and
working with Prof. Bin Wang on the Asian-Australian Monsoon
System Team. I had previously investigated characteristics
of low-level southerly surges on sub-monthly timescales
over the eastern Indian Ocean and topical-extratropical
interaction associated with the southerly surges. The
surges are caused by the development of a mid-latitude
Rossby wave that propagates in the Southern Hemisphere
and involves cold, dry air advection, tropical convection,
and an equatorial wave response. The surge has a significant
impact on the atmosphere-ocean system in the tropical
Indian Ocean region. I am now extending this work with
4-dimensional data assimilation and satellite observational
data products and studying dynamics of the cross-equatorial
influence of this transient southerly surge on the south
Asian monsoon region and the surge-induced air-sea interaction
processes. |
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| We are happy
to introduce Dr. Masanori Niwano, who has joined our
program in October. During his graduate-school years,
he revealed seasonal and interannual variations of the
Lagrangian upward velocity in the tropical lower stratosphere
by using water vapor and methane data from HALOE on
board UARS satellite, and contributed to the understanding
of the transport processes and dynamics in the lower
stratosphere. |
| During the post-doctoral
years in Kyoto University, he examined geographical
distribution of cirrus clouds, aerosol, and upwelling
in the tropical tropospause region. In FRCGC, he will
engage in establishing the regional chemical weather
forecast system for Kanto region and study the role
of transport in the occurrence of photochemical oxidant. |
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