Another talks shed light on the importance of subtropical highs in the monsoon climate. Dr. Wu discussed their fundamental dynamics, focusing on their vertical structure in response to monsoon-related heating. Dr. Xie argued that subtropical highs are inherent to a climate system with land-sea thermal contrast in the zonal direction, giving rise to a monsoonal wet climate on the eastern sides of continents in summer.
Other talks shed light on aspects of the monsoon system to which not much attention has not been paid. Dr. Nakamura drew attention to the importance of the East Asian winter monsoon. He demonstrated that its recent decadal weakening influenced atmosphere-Ocean heat and moisture exchange directly over the Northwestern Pacific and remotely farther to the east via changing the midlatitude stormtrack activity. Dr. Guan argued a possible role of monsoonal flow in the inter-hemispheric exchange of the air mass.
It has been recognized that thought-out sets of numerical experiments are a powerful tool for deepening our understanding the monsoon systems and their variability. For example, studying the ENSO-monsoon relation in extreme climate situations, as in Dr. Kitoh's experiments, provides opportunities for testing working hypotheses obtained through analysis of the present climate. It has also been recognized that international collaborations are very effective in conducting such thought-out experiments. Dr. Kang introduced the world-wide AGCM intercomparison project of CLIVAR for Asian summer monsoon. Dr. Navarra summarized the SINTEX project among EU countries, focusing on intercomparison of monsoon simulations by AGCM and CGCMs. Dr. O'Neill gave a summary of his SHIVA project, another EU project for the monsoon variability and prediction. He also introduced the succeeding project, PROMISE, in which more emphases are placed on interdisciplinary aspects of the monsoon study. It is anticipated that this symposium will accelerate not only intra-regional collaborations for monsoon study within Asia, EU, US and Australia but also collaborations among these regions.
(Prepared by H. Nakamura)
Since a unified approach in modeling and observational efforts in the Indo-Pacific Sector is an indispensable element, Dr. Meyers presented a concise report of ad hoc Workshop on Indian Ocean OBS held just prior to the SIPC. Based on this report, Australian Government is going to hold an international conference in October or early November this year, which will be a next important step toward realizing the Ocean Climate Observing System initiated at the Ocean OBS conference at St. Raphael, France. Therefore the SIPC supported by Australia-Japan, EU-Japan and France-Japan bilateral agreements adjourned with the following English version of Haiku (Japanese traditional-style poem):
Path from St. Raphael (France/EU)
passes through Tokyo (Japan) toward Perth (Australia), See you again in spring.
─Toshio Yamagata, Co-Chair, SIPC
