IPRC NEWS

The IPRC 10th Anniversary sea-level rise. In age, the students ranged from kindergarten to high school. They were fascinated by the images displayed The IPRC marked the completion of 10 years of scientific on the Magic Planet, as were their parents, and asked many achievements with a series of events in May 2008. The pre- questions about the animations displayed on this truly magi- vious issue of the IPRC Climate described the special IPRC cal sphere. Annual Symposium held on May 5 and 6 at the East-West A final event in our celebration was an informal review Center. In their invited symposium talks, University of To- workshop on May 16, in which younger IPRC scientists kyo Professor Toshio Yamagata remembered the history and showcased their research. evolution of the IPRC, and University of Maryland Profes- sor Antonio Busalacchi described the scientific accomplish- Bin Wang Elected AMS Fellow! ments of the IPRC over the last 10 years and speculated about IPRC’s future in the international climate research commu- IPRC Team Leader and Professor nity. In the evening of May 5, the IPRC staff held a reception of Bin Wang has been and dinner to honor Jay McCreary’s service as IPRC Direc- elected Fellow of the American Me- tor and to mark Professor Yamagata’s 60th birthday. teorological Society (AMS) for his On May 9 the IPRC held an Open House for local school “outstanding contributions to the children and their parents. About 40 homeschooled stu- atmospheric and related oceanic dents and their parents came to watch animations with the and hydrologic sciences during a Magic Planet, a smaller version of the NOAA Science On a substantial period of years.” The Sphere. The Magic Planet demonstrations were conducted by AMS bestows this prestigious, life- AMS Fellow Bin Wang Leon Geschwind, who gives the NOAA Science On a Sphere long title each year on no more than 0.2% of the Society’s demonstrations at Honolulu’s Bishop Museum. In addition world-wide membership. The ceremony will take place at the to the solar system, featuring spacecraft images of the planets AMS Annual Meeting to be held from January 11 to 15, 2009, and their moons, Geschwind showed animations from mod- in Phoenix, Arizona. els of climate-change projections, including one that predicts how much of Waikiki would be under water with a 3-foot IPRC Interim Director Visits JAMSTEC

In his new role as IPRC Interim Director, Kevin Hamilton travelled to Japan this summer to meet with several top-level administrators of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). At Yokosuka Headquarters, he visited with JAMSTEC Executive Director Kiyoshi Suye- hiro and Operating Executive Director Shiro Imawaki. In Yokohama, he enjoyed the opportunity to talk with Frontier Research Center for Global Change (FRCGC) Director-Gen- eral Tatsushi Tokioka and the FRCGC Program Directors Hajime Akimoto, Toshio Yamagata, and Akira Noda about the overall progress of IPRC–JAMSTEC collaborations. Hamilton was also able to discuss JAMSTEC–IPRC relations with key personnel of the JAMSTEC International Affairs From left, Grant Mason, Josiah Gill, and Mary Mason are gazing at the Division including Manager Masakuni Hanada, Deputy Magic Planet. Manager Takero Kasaya, and Shiro Matsugaura. Hamilton

International Pacific Research Center 21 Wang and Hamilton Hosted Simulated with a Fine Resolution by Japan’s Meteorological Global Model,” Hamilton discussed the results for the Hawaiian region from Research Institute the pioneering simulations performed at MRI with its TL959 atmospheric Japan’s Meteorological Research Insti- model (see also Hamilton’s article in tute (MRI) in Tsukuba hosted consecu- IPRC Climate vol. 7, no. 2). tive seminars by IPRC’s Bin Wang and Kevin Hamilton on July 9 for scientists IPRC Scientists Active from the MRI and the University of Kevin Hamilton with Wataru Ohfuchi (left) Tsukuba. Wang spoke about his recent in the Climate Research and Takeshi Enomoto (right) at the Earth work on Tibetan Plateau warming and Community Simulator Center. its effect on rainfall in East Asia. Wang’s seminar came in the mid- Interim IPRC Director Kevin Hamilton also enjoyed a discussion of science is- dle of his month-long visit to the MRI, has been appointed to the External Ad- sues with Taroh Matsuno, formerly where he worked with Akio Kitoh and visory Panel of the National Center for Director-General and currently Senior his group in the Climate Research De- Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Earth Scientist at FRCGC. partment analyzing outputs from the and Sun Systems Laboratory (ESSL). While in Japan, Hamilton paid an very high-resolution (20 km) MRI ESSL includes the main scientific divi- extended visit to the Earth Simulator global model outputs to see what fu- sions at NCAR. He has also been ap- Center, where he was hosted by Senior ture changes may occur in the diurnal pointed to the inaugural Editorial Ad- Scientist Wataru Ohfuchi and Scientist cycle and in tropical cyclone activity in visory Board of the Journal of Advances Takeshi Enomoto of the Atmospheric the western North Pacific. in Modeling Earth Systems (JAMES), a and Oceanic Simulation Group with In his MRI seminar, “Late 21st new international, electronic, open-ac- whom he is collaborating on the analy- Century in Hawai‘i cess scientific journal on environmen- sis of high-resolution AFES global at- tal modeling. For further information, mospheric model results. This work is please visit adv-model-earth-syst.org. part of the JAMSTEC–IPRC Initiative Yuqing Wang has been appointed on Model Development, Diagnosis, to the Scientific Working Group of the and Application Research. He also got VAMOS Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere- a chance to talk with several members Land Study (VOCALS), a program of of Masaki Satoh’s NICAM (Nonhydro- the CLIVAR World Climate Research static ICosahedral Atmospheric Mod- Programme. The goal of VOCALS is to el) group about other work underway develop and promote scientific activi- at the IPRC on this research theme, in- ties that lead to a better understanding cluding the analysis of NICAM global of the coupled ocean-atmosphere-land atmospheric model results. system in the Southeastern Pacific. For Front from left, Hiroaki Ueda (University of further information on VOCALS, please Tsukuba), Shoji Kusunoki (MRI), Masamichi visit www.eol.ucar.edu/projects/vocals/. Ohba (University of Tsukuba), Tomoshige In- oue (University of Tsukuba); back from left, Bin Wang, Kevin Hamilton, Akio Kitoh (MRI), Ryo Mizuta (AESTO).

22 IPRC Climate, vol. 8, no. 2, 2008 Research Team Investigates An Ecosystem Model Arabian Sea Oxygen for OFES

Minimum Zone Yoshikazu Sasai, research scientist at the Frontier Research Center for Global The Arabian Sea oxygen minimum Change, visited the IPRC in Spring zone (ASOMZ) lies at a depth of 200– 2008 for three months. Sasai has imple- 1000 m in the central and eastern Ara- mented and run an ecosystem model bian Sea. As all OMZs, the ASOMZ embedded in OFES. At the IPRC, Sasai is caused by the sinking of surface- From left: Raleigh Hood, Jay McCreary, and worked with IPRC’s Kelvin Richards produced detritus and its consump- P. N. Vinayachandran. on output from the model and in par- tion at depth by bacteria. An unusual ticular, on the impact of the eddying feature of the ASOMZ is that it is not this year, Akio Ishida had studied the Kuroshio on the primary production located in the western Arabian Sea, transport of a tracer from the Gulf of in the area. where surface production is largest, Aden to the Arabian Sea using OFES but in the central and eastern basin. A and found that the transport by eddies possible physical cause for its eastward was much stronger than that by the shift is the presence of oxygenated Red mean currents. Based on this finding, Sea water (RSW) in the western Ara- the next step in the project is to run an bian Sea. A group of scientists consist- eddy-resolving version of LOM for the ing of Jay McCreary, Zuojun Yu, and region. Kelvin Richards at IPRC; Akio Ishida at JAMSTEC; Raleigh Hood at Horn IPRC–Hokkaido University Point Environmental Laboratory; and P. N. Vinayachandran at the Indian Partnership Continues Yoshikazu Sasai and Kelvin Richards discuss- Institute of Science, Bangalore, have ing the link between the eddying flow around formed a research team to investigate The IPRC–Hokkaido University part- the Hawaiian Islands and the patterns of phy- this idea. nership in educating climate scientists toplankton. From July 22 to August 3, Raleigh continues (see last IPRC Climate issue). Hood and P. N. Vinayachandran vis- IPRC’s Kelvin Richards visited Hok- ited the IPRC to work with McCreary kaido University at the invitation of IPRC Climate Research and Yu on including an oxygen com- Professor Youichi Tanimoto. Richards to Help Sustainable Rice partment in the biological compo- gave a series of five lectures over two nent of their 6½-layer, biophysical days, as part of the on-going lecture se- Production Indian-Ocean model (LOM). Prelimi- ries given in English by IPRC scientists nary solutions to the updated model to graduate students of the Division of IPRC’s H. Annamalai is participating showed that (1) subsurface oxygen Earth System Science, Hokkaido Uni- in ClimaRice, a project that is to con- concentrations are largely controlled versity. The well-attended lectures fo- tribute to the development of regional by local processes, namely, the sinking cused on the transport, dispersion, and and national adaptation strategies to rate of detritus and vertical mixing of reaction of tracers in the ocean and sustain rice production and ensure oxygen; and (2) the oxygen flux due atmosphere. food security in a changing climate. to the transport of RSW by mean cur- The project is supported by the Nor- rents may not be sufficient to shift the wegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ASOMZ to the eastern basin. Earlier aims to assess the climate variability and its impacts on the water availabil-

International Pacific Research Center 23 ity and rice production in to oceanographers in recent years. While at the IPRC, Plumb the Cauvery River Basin gave two seminars, one on the role of the stratosphere in cli- of Tamil Nadu in India. mate and the other on the effects of eddy transports in the at- In addition to the IPRC, mosphere and oceans. IPRC scientists took the opportunity the Tamil Nadu Agricul- to discuss their research with Plumb and to tap into his broad tural University (TNAU) knowledge of large-scale fluid dynamics. Visiting Associate in Coimbatore, India, Researcher Mototaka Nakamura, a former student of Pro- and the Norwegian Insti- fessor Plumb, was his host at the IPRC. tute for Agricultural and Environmental Research Published! (Bioforsk) are participat- ing. The role of the IPRC The article “Trends in Hail in China during 1960–2005,” Cauvery River, courtesy of Wikipedia, in this project is to assess which IPRC’s Yuqing Wang co-authored with colleagues the free encyclopedia. the value of high-resolu- Baoguo Xie and Qinghong Zhang of Beijing University was tion regional model simu- chosen as a highlight of the July 2008 issue of Geophysical lations for describing the future impacts of climate change Research Letters by the journal’s editor and subsequently by on the Indian and the frequency and intensity of the editor of Nature China. The study showed that the mean drought in the region. The results from this assessment will number of annual hail days in northern China decreased provide input to the hydrological and crop-weather modeling, significantly from the early 1980s to 2005. The decrease was which will be conducted by Bioforsk and TNAU. For more thought to stem from the fact that the freezing-level height information see www.tnau.ac.in/climarice/index.html. has risen. The study “Rise in Tibetan Plateau Temperatures May IPRC Hosts Alan Plumb Affect East Asian rainfall,” spearheaded by IPRC’s Bin Wang and also published in the July issue of the Geophysical Re- Professor R. Alan Plumb, FRS, former Director of the Program search Letters was highlighted in the September issue of the in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate at the Massachusetts Nature Geoscience. The 1.8°C rise in temperatures on the Ti- Institute of Technology, visited the IPRC from November 5 betan Plateau over the last 50 years may have had a notable to 14, 2008. Plumb is a leading authority in the field of geo- effect on East Asian rainfall according to the experiments physical fluid dynamics and is well-known for his contri- with atmospheric general circulation models. Projected butions to the science of the stratosphere and atmospheric increases in Tibetan Plateau temperatures may further en- transports. He is also a leading scientist in the field of eddy- hance summer rainfall in East Asia. Co-authors of the study mean flow interaction, a field that has become very relevant are Qing Bao, Guoxiong Wu, and Yimin Liu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Brian Hoskins of the . The article “Topographic Effects on the Solar Semidiur- nal Surface Tide Simulated in a Very Fine Resolution Gen- eral Circulation Model” by IPRC’s Kevin Hamilton, NOAA’s Steve Ryan and JAMSTEC’s Wataru Ohfuchi, published in September in the Journal of Geophysical Research, was select- ed as an AGU Journal Highlight. The study used both high- resolution global model simulations and observations from a network of surface pressure sensors on the island of Hawai‘i to explore small-scale topographic modulation of the semidi- From left, Alan Plumb with Takeaki Sampe and his IPRC host Mototaka urnal atmospheric tide (IPRC Climate, vol 8, no. 1). Nakamura. iprc

24 IPRC Climate, vol. 8, no. 2, 2008 NEW IPRC STAFF

Tobias Friedrich joined the IPRC as several years. He then came to the University of Hawai‘i and a postdoctoral fellow in June 2008, received his PhD in meteorology in 2008. just after obtaining his PhD from For his dissertation, Ge investigated the energy disper- the Leibniz Institute for Marine Sci- sion from a tropical cyclone in a three-dimensional baroclinic ences GEOMAR at the University model and how this energy dispersion leads to the formation of Kiel in Germany. His disserta- of a synoptic-scale Rossby wave train in its wake. This Rossby tion focused on quantifying North wave train can then trigger a new tropical cyclone. Analyzing Atlantic carbon uptake from data the model results of such a sequence of events, he found that taken on transects by volunteer- Tobias Friedrich a concentrated vorticity band formed in the upper levels of observing ships in the North Atlantic. Using a high-resolution the wave train, which then propagated downward. A possible model, he simulated the present-day monitoring of carbon explanation is that smaller inertial instability in the upper- dioxide partial pressure (pCO2) at the ocean surface in the level wave branch can lead to stronger vorticity there. Once North Atlantic and then examined several methods for ex- an intense asymmetric outflow jet has been generated, it can trapolating the individual local observations to create a bas- propagate to the lower level of the Rossby wave train. The inwide view of pCO2. He found that he could create monthly development of the outflow jet results in a more intense and mean maps of pCO2 for the North Atlantic by using neural larger tropical cyclone, affecting the strength of the Rossby network techniques to combine remotely sensed data of sea wave train since the energy dispersion is sensitive to tropical surface temperature and chlorophyll as well as Argo float cyclone intensity and size. The downward propagation of the data with ongoing measurements of pCO2 and related vari- Rossby wave energy strengthens the lower-level wave train ables. The high spatial and temporal variability of ocean-sur- branch. face pCO2 and insufficient optical satellite and observational At IPRC, Ge is further investigating tropical cyclogen- coverage of the ocean, however, he feels limit the accuracy of esis with Tim Li and is studying the application of satellite the mapping procedure he designed. data to tropical cyclone and hurricane prediction with nu- At the IPRC, Friedrich is working with Axel Timmer- merical models. mann and Oliver Timm on mechanisms that cause centen- nial-to-millennial scale variations of the Atlantic Meridional Jasti Sriranga Chowdary joined Overturning Circulation. “My studying physical oceanogra- the IPRC as a postdoctoral fellow phy in Kiel,” he says, “was arranged by fate and gives me the in June 2008. He received his PhD opportunity to become a scientist with social responsibility, in December 2007 from the Indian while at the same time I can enjoy the ocean.” Institute of Tropical Meteorology at the University of Pune, where Xuyang Ge joined the IPRC as a he continued to work as a research postdoctoral fellow in June 2008. associate until coming to Hawai‘i. He became interested in meteo- Chowdary recalls, “I became fasci- Jasti Sriranga Chowdary rology, particularly in tropical cy- nated with meteorology and oceanography while studying clones, because typhoons threaten for my master’s degree in atmospheric physics at the Univer- his hometown, Zhejiang, China, sity of Pune. I was especially interested in learning about the nearly every year and can cause El Niño-Southern Oscillation and its influence on the Indian severe damages. After obtaining a Ocean. This led me to do my dissertation research on surface master’s degree in meteorology at Xuyang Ge and subsurface variability of the tropical Indian Ocean.” the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technol- Using various observational and modeling data sets, ogy in 1997, he worked at the Shanghai Climate Center for Chowdary studied several Indian Ocean climate-related

International Pacific Research Center 25 phenomena for his dissertation. He evaluated the Indian At the IPRC, Kadota is investigating with Kevin Ham- Ocean basin-wide warming due to El Niño during years with ilton the extent to which the stratosphere impacts weather and without an Indian Ocean Dipole. He studied the effects in the Northern Hemisphere and whether winter-weather of La Niña—before 1976, La Niña was associated with win- forecasts can be improved with knowledge of stratospheric tertime basin-wide tropical Indian Ocean cooling, but not activity. after 1976. He also compared the atmospheric and oceanic conditions of the Arabian Sea during the contrasting south- Hyodae Seo joined the IPRC in Au- west monsoon years of 2002 (drought year) and 2003 (nor- gust 2008 as a NOAA Climate and mal year). He noted that during the 2002 monsoon season, Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow. early onset and weak winds stress curl cooled the Arabian After receiving his bachelor’s degree Sea, whereas in 2003, late onset of the southwesterlies in June in atmospheric sciences at Yonsei and downwelling Rossby wave propagation probably kept the University in 2002, he switched to Arabian Sea warm until late July. Scripps Institution of Oceanogra- At the IPRC, Chowdary is working with Shang-Ping phy, where he received his PhD in Xie in the areas of ocean-atmosphere interaction, and cli- climate science in 2007. Hyodae Seo mate variability and change in the Indo-western Pacific. “My initial focus for my dissertation,” Seo recalls, “was to investigate the mesoscale air-sea coupling of the Califor- Minoru Kadota joined the IPRC nia coastal oceans. So I helped construct a regional coupled as a postdoctoral fellow in fall 2008 ocean-atmosphere model that would capture such air-sea after receiving his PhD in applied coupling. But coming across one of Shang-Ping Xie’s papers mathematics from the Courant In- on tropical instability waves (TIWs) and the Central Ameri- stitute of Mathematical Science at can gap winds, I applied the model to the eastern equatorial New York University. Pacific. The first model results revealed surprisingly realis- After high school, Kadota tic TIWs and the atmospheric responses that Xie and others worked as a commercial fisherman reported from the satellite measurements. I turned, there- for four years. He ploughed through Minoru Kadota fore, to study how, in the model, the observed mesoscale 30- to 40-foot waves, fought through fierce storms, even ty- coupling feeds back to the tropical atmosphere and ocean. I phoons, and became awed by the power of nature. No won- also looked at whether resolving the Atlantic TIW mesoscale der that, when he decided to go to university, he first went air-sea process in this coupled model improves simulation into oceanography before turning to mathematics. of mean climate in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. The coupled For his dissertation, Kadota examined the ensemble model showed that including representation of TIWs and predictability of mid-latitude weather associated with the other oceanic eddies improves the Atlantic meridional sea Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), the dominant mode of surface temperature gradients and meridional winds, and intraseasonal variation in the tropical atmosphere. Obser- hence the location of the inter-tropical convergence zone vations indicate that rainfall patterns over North America (ITCZ). Moreover, including small-scale convergence and and South America are associated with phases and the spa- convective processes associated with the synoptic-scale Af- tial range of the MJO. General circulation models, however, rican Easterly Waves (AEWs) in the atmospheric component still have major problems with producing the MJO patterns of the coupled model substantially improves simulation of and variance distribution, and therefore are poor in predict- the amount of Atlantic ITCZ rainfall. The processes arising ing these MJO-related weather disturbances. Kadota built a from TIWs and AEWs are poorly resolved in today’s global simple numerical model of the MJO, which he drove with the coupled climate models, a fact that probably accounts for MJO latent-heat pattern, and inserted this MJO model into why those models show large climate biases in the Atlantic a GCM. Using information theory, he was able to show that and the Pacific.” with his more realistic simulation of the MJO, the relevant medium-to-long-range weather predictions will improve.

26 IPRC Climate, vol. 8, no. 2, 2008 For his fellowship research, Seo has been focusing on IPRC Bids Sayonara coupled climate modeling of the tropical Atlantic, Indian, and North Pacific oceans. At IPRC he will continue to study Associate Researcher Tommy Jensen, who has been a various coupled climate processes of these oceans with part of the IPRC since 1998, took a position with the Shang-Ping Xie and other scientists. Navy Research Laboratory-Stennis Space Center in Mississippi this past summer. While at the IPRC, Jens- Lei Wang joined the IPRC as a post- en explored, among other topics, the upper-ocean water doctoral fellow in August 2008 after mass exchanges between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of obtaining his PhD in atmospheric Bengal using the numerical layer model he developed. science from the Department of He served, furthermore, as editor of the Journal of Cli- Mathematics at Hong Kong Uni- mate from 2003 to 2007. At Stennis, he is with the Plan- versity of Science and Technology. ning Systems Inc., part of QinetiQ, North-America. He His bachelor’s and mater’s degrees is analyzing coupled atmosphere-ocean-wave models were actually in physical ocean- and has participated in a validation study of Hurricane Lei Wang ography, a field he chose without Katrina for the Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Prediction knowing much about, but it sounded interesting. He recalls, System. “After taking part in several field ocean investigations, dur- Associate Researcher Maxim Yaremchuk has also been ing which I could observe and get to know the ocean better, with the IPRC since 1998. His research at IPRC focused I began to understand what physical oceanography is about, on regional climate studies at seasonal time scales using and I enjoyed doing the research. The switch to atmospher- different methods of variational data assimilation into ic science for my PhD was a big change and challenge for numerical models. He also joined Stennis Space Center me. I chose my topic—atmospheric vortices and tropical in Mississippi and is now doing research on the data cyclones—because of my experiences with ocean eddies. In assimilation methods themselves; specifically, he is my dissertation, I tried to answer the question, How do tropi- trying to combine ensemble and variational approaches cal cyclones form? This is still one of the great mysteries of to interpolate oceanographic data in open-boundary the tropical atmosphere. Based on results of my study, I pro- domains. posed that the critical condition for tropical cyclogenesis is the persistent release of large amounts of latent heat induced Postdoctoral Fellow Shinichiro Kida, who joined the by lower-upper tropospheric coupling. The reason that many IPRC in 2006, returned to Japan in November to work tropical disturbances do not develop into tropical cyclones is as a researcher at the JAMSTEC Earth Simulator Cen- that lower-upper tropospheric coupling, either dynamical or ter, where he joins another former IPRC colleague, thermal, is not strong enough.” Bunmei Taguchi. Kida continues to do climate varia- At the IPRC, Wang is working with Yuqing Wang on de- tion research on the Indonesian Throughflow and mar- veloping a new version of the IPRC regional coupled model ginal seas in the western Pacific. (iROAM) with which he plans to study the air-sea interac- iprc tion in the eastern Pacific. “It is a new research topic for me, and I hope my previous experiences in both oceanography and tropical cyclones will be helpful.” iprc

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