Atmosphere and Ocean Research Section

The goal of this section is to understand the physical/chemical structure of the atmosphere-ocean system and its change mechanisms through synergetic observational research and model simulations. A new type of a global atmospheric model called the Nonhydrostatic ICosahedral Atmospheric Model (NICAM) is being developed in our group. NICAM is a global model with a horizontal mesh size of less than a few kilometers that explicitly resolves convective circulations associated with deep cumulus clouds that are particularly seen in the tropics. NICAM should improve representations of cloud-precipitation systems and achieve less uncertainty in climate simulations by explicitly calculating deep cumulus clouds. NICAM has a unique mesh structure, called the icosahedral grid,that extends over the sphere of the Earth. Using NICAM, we can simulate realistic behavior of cloud systems, such as tropical cyclones, heavy rainfall in summer seasons, and cloud-systems in the tropics, over the global domain together with the intra-seasonal oscillation including the Madden-Julian Oscillations. We intend to use NICAM by coupling with the ocean model (COCO) and other process models such as an aerosol-transport model to further atmosphere and ocean research.

Ongoing Research Themes

●General circulation dynamics and high-resolution atmosphere and ocean modeling
●Research on cloud-precipitation systems and reduction of uncertainty of cloud models
●Collaborative research between satellite remote sensing and numerical modeling