Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences
Tohoku University

The region off the Pacific coast of Tohoku, that is, the Kuroshio-Oyashio confluence region, is fertile fishing ground. The extratropical cyclones tend to explosively develop in just 24 hours when those pass over the Kuroshio-Oyashio confluence region, and thus the explosively developed extratropical cyclones induce the severe weather such as storm wind, heavy rainfall, and heavy snowfall along the Pacific side of Japan. The Kuroshio-Oyashio confluence region is a key area for the disaster prevention.

The Kuroshio-Oyashio confluence region is characterized by vigorous heat release from the ocean to the overlying atmosphere during winter, and one of extremely large heat release region in the world’s ocean. Some scientists pointed out that the extratropical cyclones would explosively develop due to the vigorous thermal energy released from the ocean in the region. Therefore, it is much important to reveal the heat exchange between the ocean and atmosphere.

I try to reveal the oceanic fields in the Kuroshio-Oyashio confluence region by using shipboard and satellite-derived observations and to understand influence of oceanic field on the overlying atmospheric field by performing numerical experiments.