The other group, predictability research group lead by Dr Sakuma is mostly involved in basic research in GFD. We need a strong fundamental research. At the same time some members of the group are working for model development collaborating with the Integrated Model Research Program.
I Iike to comment on general matters. The goal of our study is to reduce uncertainties. Enhancing process studies is important and comparison of model results with observations is important. Clarifying what is understood and what is not understood is very important to show the direction to go. Developing coupled model is important and we are now preparing. We'd like to stress that human resources are rather poor in this country. This problem could be solved through national and international collaborations. The problem how to develop an integrated model must be very similar to projects in high-energy physics as we see hundreds of authors in a paper. How to introduce young talented scientists is very difficult but important because they don't like to be a part of a big machine. We have to be careful to avoid this situation.
Dr. Tetsuzo Yasunari (Hydrological Cycle Research Program):
First of all I like to show this map (not shown). This is the prediction of precipitation at the CO2 doubling. You can see particularly in the Asian monsoon area a very noisy pattern so that we cannot use this as the basis of water recourses change or application to practical purposes. Reducing such uncertainties is one of the objectives of the hydrological cycle research program.
As I mentioned in my presentation, hydrological processes including latent heating in the atmosphere and evaporation at the land and ocean surfaces and their feed backs play crucial roles for persistency and transitivity of climate particularly in the coupled ENSO-monsoon system. Hydrological processes are most important processes in the climate system and at the same time most unknown processes, in regard to surface processes and cloud-precipitation processes. So we really need data for modeling and so the first in our research strategy is to acquire data and cooperation with observation group particularly close collaboration with the Frontier Observational Research Program (FORSGC) is the top priority. We also strengthen cooperation with national and international observation programs for data collection. As to research subject improvement of seasonal cycle in climate system model is so essential especially in the Asian monsoon region.
