In order to answer those questions and in order to reduce uncertainty of these two issues collaboration with observational programs is crucially important, because those atmospheric phenomena including chemical species and chemical reactions are so complex that we cannot solve the problem purely theoretically. We always need to revise and improve models by validating them by observation. Only in this may we can develop advanced models.
Particularly interesting thing in the next decade is use of satellite data from tropospheric chemistry sensors. Although chemical sensors have been developed since 30 years ago most of information are available only for stratospheric species. But now for the interests in observing the troposphere many tropospheric chemistry sensors are proposed and some have already been launched on board on satellites. The first is IMG on ADEOS giving CO and now MOPITT, a Canadian sensor, gives CH4 and CO profiles, GOME, an European sensor, gives O3, NO2, SO2 etc, and in the near future SCIAMACI will give O3, NO2,SO2 and lots of other species. So, in Frontier, since we are supported by NASDA we like to develop ability to analyze data from satellite as one of our missions.
Finally the issue to be addressed would be air quality-climate change interaction and feedbacks. The whole of the Frontier programs is mostly focused on climate change. Since air quality change, such as the changes in O3, aerosols and other species influence climate and interact with climate change the coupling of air quality change and climate change must be studied. These are our future plans.
Dr. Yoshifumi Yasuoka (Ecosystem Variability Research Program):
The ecosystem variability research program started last year. And we are focusing on global warming and biodiversity.
The first topic is the interaction of ecosystem and the atmosphere. We are now clarifying roles or existing functions of the ecosystem to improve prediction of global warming. At the same time biodiversity relating things are very important which are crucial in the ecosystem response to global climate change, an important issue in global change. The final goal should be integration of all models in different fields. We have 6 research programs but all of results of these programs should be integrated into the integrated model. So what we can contribute to this integration is my major concern.
Before that we have to clarify the end to end flow from observation to prediction through models. We have different types of observation data and these data should be fed to models of different types and stages properly in order to make predictions. We need to clarify the structure of this end to end flow in advance of which the ecosystem research will be a part.
