News (from Frontier's news letter) Croplands have been identified as a very important source of atmospheric trace gases such as N2O (nitrogen monoxide), NO (nitric oxide), NH3 (ammonia), and CH4 (methane). Agriculture in East, Southeast and South Asia exhibits unique factors related to the generation of these gases. Although this region accounts for only 36% of the world's cropland area, it consumes more than half of the world's nitrogen fertilizers. Moreover, approximately 90% of the world's rice fields, a source of CH4, are located in this region. Therefore, emissions of N2O, NO, NH3 and CH4 from croplands in this region merit the close scrutiny of Xiaoyuan Yan in the Emission Inventory Sub-Group. By analyzing the relationships between emissions and fertilizer use, soil properties, water management and climate, and by drawing upon agricultural activity data, we have developed a fine emission inventory of N2O, NO, NH3 and CH4 from croplands for each country in this region. For China and India, the inventory was developed for each province or state. In addition, we are trying to predict future emissions of these gases by considering changes in land use and population as well as economic growth. (posted October 31, 2003) 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.(posted March 18, 2003) 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. (posted January 10, 2003) Observation of Atmospheric Composition Change in China will Start - Better Parameterization of Various Physical Processes for Climate Modeling - What causes global warming and accompanying climate change? It is well known that longlived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) targeted in Kyoto Protocol, that Japan ratified are the causes. However, they are not the sole category of compounds that determines global warming and climate change. Recently, it has been pointed out that short - lived air pollutants such as tropospheric ozone and aerosols are very important for climate change and it is anticipated that they will be focused in the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. As shown in the report, CO2, CH4, tropospheric ozone and aerosols are the most important for global warming. From this viewpoint, we will start observations of these four major species focusing on China where intense observation of atmospheric chemistry has not been made. This project is titled "Observational Study on Atmospheric Composition Change in East Asia Related to Global Warming". The goal of this study is to quantify process parameters of material budget of these species for the purpose of contributing to the development of chemistry/climate coupling model. Among these species, Prof. Nakazawa's group at Tohoku University and Prof. Nakajima's Tokyo University, are responsible for CO2/CH4 and aerosols, respectively. Frontier Observational Research System for Global Change (FORSGC) is responsible for tropsopheric ozone and its precursors. Fig. 1 below depicts the location of the observational stations proposed in this study. (posted October 31, 2002) Fig. 1 Observation network proposed in this study Black circles: CO2 and/or O3 observation stations; White circles: Aerosol radiation observation 10th Symposium of the IAMAS/CACGP (Commission of Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Air Pollution) and 7th Scientific Conference of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project (IGAC) were jointly held during 18th-25th September in Crete Island, Greece. Program Director, Dr. Hajime Akimoto, and 10 other colleagues of ACRP joined the meeting and contributed their latest achievements. The meeting, as it is titled "Atmospheric Chemistry within the Earth System: From Regional Pollution to Global Change," covers a wide range of issues on the tropospheric compositions -greenhouse gases, oxidants, acidic substances, and aerosols -including their natural variability, anthropogenic impacts exerted, and their roles in the context of global change. One of the highlights in this meeting was a cluster of presentations on ongoing as well as completed regional field studies across the globe, in which well-instrumented aircraft/ships/ground-based stations are intensively coordinated according to their scientific objectives. Atmospheric chemists in Japan have surely contributed a lot in such activities especially in Asia and the western Pacific region. Huge database collected in field studies has helped and will keep helping a lot for validating and refining chemical-transport models. At the end of the Symposium, Dr. Anne Thompson of NASA/GSFC succeeded as the next CACGP chair from Dr. Akimoto who had been serving as the chair since 1998. (posted October 31, 2002) Program Director, H. Akimoto attended "Air Pollution as a Climate Forcing Workshop" held in Honolulu during Aril 29 and May 3, midst of Golden Week. The venue was East West Center located in the cam-pus of University of Hawaii. The workshop was co-sponsored by IPRC together with NASA, NOAA, EPA, etc., and IPRC staff members took care of more than 100 participants. The workshop theme was a link between non-CO 2 air pollutants such as methane, ozone and aerosol, and climate change. Wide range of topics including atmospheric chemistry, mitigation technology, and health effects were discussed. Akimoto met all Japanese members of IPRC during a session interval as well as the IPRC Director, Dr. McCeary, at the reception. It was very good to have had a chance to get acquainted directly with IPRC with which we usually do not have close contact. (posted Jul. 31, 2002) How the airborne pollutants produced over the Asian continent are entering the western Pacific region? To answer this question, NASDA, in co-operation with domestic and foreign researchers, conducted the aircraft observation,The Pacific Exploration of Asian Continental Emission phase-A (PEACE-A), from 6 to 23 January. During that period, Dr. Masayuki Takigawa, a researcher of our program stayed at the base of operations in Kagoshima. He provided the chemical weather forecast, which contributed greatly to the route making of the airplane. The forecasting system, developed by Dr. Takigawa, incorporated the emission, dispersion, and photochemical processes of about 30 chemical species into atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM). It can thus predict the global distribution of photochemical oxidants, sulfate aerosols, and their precursors for up to 4 days. The system predicted the atmospheric flow of pollutants accompanying the cold front passage, which agreed well with the observation. (posted Mar. 31, 2002) Figure caption: A chemical weather map at 6:00GMT 21st January predicted on the previous day. Regions with high concentrations of CO, NOx, and SO2 are represented by yellow, green, and white plumes, respectively. Violet areas represent regions with high concentrations of surface ozone. Based on this prediction, a research flight was conducted off the south coast of Japan on 21st. Taking the occasion of almost three years since the Atmospheric Composition Research Program of FRSGC was started, "Symposium on Atmospheric Composition Change -Toward the Integration of Observation and Modeling-" has been held on November 19 - 20, at the general conference room of the Yokohama campus. The Symposium aims at exchange of ideas with domesticresearchers on global atmospheric chemistry, and was attended by about 70 people with 25 oral and 26 poster presentations. The Atmospheric Composition Research Group mainly consists of modelers of atmospheric chemistry that is rather unique in this country. Both of experimentalists and modelers assembled at the Symposium. At the end, future important research in this field was discussed. The poster session utilizing the foyer aside of the conference room was held for the first time. Since panel boards for posters were newly purchased by FRSGC, their future use is encouraged.　(posted Jan. 5, 2002) A Russian scientist Dr. Leonid Yurganov, who expertises a remote sensing technique of atmospheric trace elements, has joined FRSGC since last October. During the past several years of his stay in US and Canada, he has been working for the data validation team for a satellite sensor MOPITT (Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere). Satellite remote sensing of tropospheric chemical species is one of the promising and growing subjects, and atmospheric chemists worldwide are gathering around this "cutting edge" field. By MOPITT horizontal distributions of CO and CH4 in the troposphere have been successfully retrieved on a global scale, which reveal their emissions into the atmosphere as well as their long-range transport across the globe. Dr. Yurganov is also challenging a retrieval of other tropospheric pollutants including NO2. At FRSGC, he will collaborate with chemical-transport modelers to make inter-comparisons between model results and satellite data. (posted Jan. 5, 2002) In June, the Workshop on Emissions of Chemical Species and Aerosols was held in Paris. Program Director Dr. Akimoto, Sub-leader Dr. Ohara, researcher Dr. Yan, and research staff Ms. Yamaji attended the workshop and the emission inventory subgroup gave its first presentation. Dr. David Streets was invited from Argonne National Laboratory in the U.S. for a seminar at our institute on September 3. In collaboration with Dr. Streets, the Atmospheric Composition Research Program aims to develop a high-resolution emission inventory for the Asian region. In July, seven members of the research program participated in the 8th Scientific Assembly of InternationalAssociation of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS) in Innsbruck. The seven participants included Program Director Dr. Akimoto and researchers Drs. Wild, Takigawa, Zhang, Pochanart, Kanaya, and Naja. Preparations in the research program are also under way for the Symposium on Atmospheric Composition Change: Toward the Integration of Observation and Modeling, which will be held on November 19 and 20 at the Yokohama Institute for Earth Sciences. (posted Oct. 31, 2001) back to home