8-9 March, 2007

Symposium "Predictability of the Climate Variations in the Indo-Pacific Sectors" Held

The symposium on the "Predictability of the Climate Variations in the Indo-Pacific Sectors" was successfully held at the Shinagawa Prince Hotel, Tokyo on March 8-9, 2007. The symposium was co-convened by Prof. Toshio Yamagata of Climate Variations Research Program (CVRP) of Frontier Research Center for Global Change (FRCGC) / Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and Dr. C-K Park of APCC Climate Center (APCC), Korea and was organized to encourage international information exchanges on climate predictability and process studies under the auspices of Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) through Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). The symposium was also co-sponsored by the Oceanographic Society of Japan and the Meteorological Society of Japan. In addition to 17 speakers from Japan 22 renowned international scientists spoke at the symposium, which was attended by about 150 participants. The symposium addressed various issues ranging from climate predictability including the 2006 Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) event to understanding the climate variability such as the recently found El Niño Modoki. The interaction of climate signals on various scales is also discussed in relation to the extreme weather events under the global warming stress. Participants showed much interest in each others work and wished to convene such meeting at regular intervals.