In April 2012, the second phase of JUMP began! Our new website may be accessed by clicking on the JUMP logo above.

The JUMP name and logo remain, although several institutes in Japan have changed name. JUMP is based at the RIGC, which is part of JAMSTEC, and includes researchers working on similar topics from RIGC, NIES (National Institute for Environmental Studies), AORI (formerly CCSR, University of Tokyo) and NIED (National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention). Running for 5 years, from April 2012, we are funded by two new projects from the ministries of Environment and Science. The former structure of the whole "Leading Project" was dissolved by JAMSTEC management upon the cessation of the previous funding stream so, despite the unusually strong success (compared to other Japanese projects), of JUMP over the last 5 years, it not now part of the formal structure of JAMSTEC. The goal of JUMP remains investigating and reducing uncertainty associated with various aspects of climate change prediction ranging over the multi-decadal to centennial time scale. Paleoclimate studies remain a strong aspect of our research activities.

History of JUMP: In April 2007 James and I were funded through two different five-year Japanese projects, the Ministry of Environments "S5" and MEXT's "Kakushin". In order to aid management of these projects I invented JUMP, the Japan Uncertainty Modelling Project or, our answer to the UK Met Office's QUMP. At that time there was a team of five researchers working on uncertainty related issues at FRCGC with wider collaborative links to both the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba and the Center for Climate System Research in Kashiwa, which is part of the University of Tokyo. In April 2009 JUMP went public in Japan, ceasing to be a covert underground operation known only to the outside world. Our JAMSTEC chapter officially existed as the Uncertainty Estimation Research Group, of which I was the leader within the so called "Towards AR5, Leading Project". The list of members of this first phase of JUMP can be found at our former researchpages.net site.

The research of JUMP is focussed on reducing uncertainty in prediction of future climate change. We have investigated many different components of the climate system including: sea-ice, ice sheets, terrestrial carbon cycle, ocean biogeochemistry, global and regional temperature and precipitation, and climate feedbacks. We mainly use state-of-the-art GCMs and intermediate complexity models, focussing on both single and multi-model ensembles. The periods of interest studied have included the Last Glacial Maximum, the mid-Holocene, the Last Millennium, the Historical period, as well as the future.

Over the last few years my personal research interest has been on using paleoclimate information to learn about future climate change.  Most recently I have been using statistical methods to assess the ensemble of climate models run for the Last Glacial Maximum and mid-Holocene in the Paleoclimate Inter-comparison projects (PMIP, PMIP2 and PMIP3). First steps in using these ensemble to constrain future climate have begun.

Whenever I come across a really difficult mathematical problem I call up my pet mathematician.

I am presently co-editor of a special issue related to the results from the third Paleoclimate Inter-comparison project PMIP3. The issue is called Progress in paleoclimate modelling and submissions are still welcome. Please email the lead editor of this special issue, Masa Kageyama, if you have any queries about this special issue.

I was lead editor of the special issue for  Climate of the Past called Modelling Late Quaternary Climate. The issue was completed in 2007 and is available free to all on-line [discussion, final]. A hard-copy version has been produced, and it is still possible to order a copy by emailing Nadine Deisel. This special issue arose from the EGU Climate session, "Modelling the Climates of the Late Quaternary" held at the 2006 meeting in Vienna.

Frustrated with the un-reproduceable state of much work published using complex computer models, we (Dan Lunt, Rolf Sander, Ian Rutt, Andy Ridgwell, me and James) decided to try to start a new journal where models, technical modelling advancements and model inter-comparison projects could be properly published, including source code and manuals. Several other people also thought this was a good idea and thus an orange on-line EGU journal was formed:

"Geoscientific Model Development (GMD) is an international scientific journal dedicated to the publication and public discussion of the description, development and evaluation of numerical models of the Earth System and its components."

Thanks in large part to the EGU's assistance, GMD is a success and I still enjoy being an executive editor of the journal.

I always thought that there should be a sister journal to Climate of the Past, called Climate of the Future, but somehow the idea never got very far up the flagpole of the EGU publications committee. Instead the EGU chose to incorporate this aspect into a new more wide-ranging journal called Earth System Dynamics. I serve as a topical editor of this journal, which seems to be developing into a home for interesting and sometimes unusual or contentious papers.