International Programs and Projects
International Programs
SCOSTEP/PRESTO
PRESTO（Predictability of the variable Solar-Terrestrial Coupling) is the international scientific program from 2019 operated by the Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP).
iLEAPS
iLEAPS (Integrated Land Ecosystem - Atmosphere Processes Study) aims to enhance the understanding of how interacting biological, chemical and physical processes transport energy and matter through the land – atmosphere interface at all scales from past to future and local to global, with particular emphasis on the human influence on these processes. The land-atmosphere interface is where humans primarily operate. Humans modify the land surface in many ways that influence the fluxes of energy and trace gases between land and atmosphere. Their emissions change the chemical composition of the atmosphere and anthropogenic aerosols change the radiative balance of the globe directly by scattering sunlight back to space and indirectly by changing the properties of clouds. Feedback loops among all these processes, land, the atmosphere, and biogeochemical cycles of nutrients and trace gases extend the human influence even further. iLEAPS focuses on the basic biogeochemical processes that link land-atmosphere exchange, climate, the water cycle and tropospheric chemistry.
IASC
The International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), which was established in 1990, is a non-governmental organization. IASC is one of the organizations constituting the International Science Council (ISC). The aim of the IASC is to initiate, develop, and coordinate scientific activities focusing on the environmental changes in the Arctic region. The scientific foci are not only on the natural environmental changes such as climate warming, sea ice retrieve, and permafrost thaw, but also on the human dimension relating to the impacts of climate warming on the hydrological systems, landscape changes, and the corresponding societal challenges in the Arctic circum-polar regions. One of the faculty staff of the CICR (Prof. Tetsuya Hiyama) is a member of the TWG (Terrestrial Working Group) of IASC. Prof. Hiyama is serving to promote scientific activities internationally on the Arctic circum-polar hydrological systems and the human-nature perspectives in the Arctic region.
International Projects
SuperDARN
SuperDARN (Super Dual Auroral Radar Network) is an international collaboration project by eleven countries in the world. SuperDARN consists of twenty-two sites in the northern hemisphere and twelve sites in the southern hemisphere, covering over the northern and southern high- and mid-latitude regions. The Hokkaido East / West radars, i.e., Hokkaido Pair of (HOP) radars, were constructed by ISEE, Nagoya Univ., and are located at the lowest geomagnetic latitude among the SuperDARN radars.
ArCS II：Arctic Challenge for Sustainability II
ArCS II (Arctic Challenge for Sustainability II) is the Japanese national flagship project funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan, and launched in June 2020. The CICR will contribute to the strategic goal 1 (Advanced Observation of Arctic Environmental Change) of the ArCS II, through observing greenhouse gas fluxes and continuous monitoring the permafrost at boreal forests in eastern Siberia.
EISCAT project
The EISCAT Scientific association operate several IS radars in northern
Scandinavia.
As an associate member, Japan run special experiments using the EISCAT
radars.
ISEE group has operated several instruments such as a sodium LIDAR, an MF
radar, optical imagers at the EISCAT Tromsoe site
to study the polar upper atmosphere.
Optical Mesosphere Thermosphere Imagers
The Optical Mesosphere Thermosphere Imagers (OMTIs) are the optical instruments that measures dynamical variation of the upper atmosphere through nocturnal airglow and auroral emissions. OMTIs consist of airglow imagers, Fabry-Perot Interferometers, and airglow temperature photometers, and are installed at many ground-based stations in Canada, Russia, Japan, South-East Asia, Australia, Northern Europe, and Africa.
ISEE Magnetometer Network
ISEE magnetometer network is the ground-based magnetometer network to study storms, substorms, and ELF/ULF waves. This network consists of 64-Hz sampling induction magnetometers and 1-Hz sampling fluxgate magnetometers in Canada, Russia, Japan, and Indonesia.
ISEE VLF/ELF Network
ISEE ELF/VLF network is the ground-based loop-antenna network to study natural ELF/VLF waves from the magnetosphere and from lightening. This network consists of 20-100kHz sampling loop antennas in Canada and Japan.
PWING Project
This project constructs a longitudinal observation network at 8 ground-based stations at subauroral latitudes (magnetic latitudes: ~60 degree) to monitor 2-dimentional images of particle precipitation and ULF/ELF/VLF waves at frequencies of 0.1Hz - 10 kHz. We combine these longitudinal network observations with the ERG satellite, which will be launched in fiscal year 2016, and global modeling. Using these comprehensive observations and modeling, we provide global distribution and quantitative evaluation of the dynamical variation of plasmas and waves in the inner magnetosphere at L~4 Re near the plasmapause.
PBASE Program
The PBASE program aims to significantly contribute to understanding and predicting geospace variabilities by combining ground-based and satellite observations and modeling, covering a wide area in both altitude and latitude/longitude directions. Early-career researchers including newly hired Post-Doctoral Fellows and Ph.D students are participating in this program.
PAWCs: Pan-Arctic Water-Carbon Cycles
Recent global warming accelerates Arctic sea ice retreat, which derives significant changes in atmospheric-terrestrial water cycle in the Arctic and pan-Arctic regions. Because spatiotemporal variations in emission (or absorption) of greenhouse gases are largely dependent on surface water and vegetation conditions over the terrestrial land surfaces, for better understanding and for better future projection of water-carbon cycles in the pan-Arctic region, it is necessary to conduct an integrated study on atmospheric- terrestrial water-carbon cycles in the region. The purpose of the PAWCs project is to integrate atmospheric- terrestrial water and carbon cycles in the pan-Arctic region. We firstly integrate atmospheric- and terrestrial-water cycle models which can calculate spatiotemporal variations in the atmospheric moisture transport, moisture flux convergence, precipitation, vegetation condition, permafrost degradation, and river discharge over the Arctic and pan-Arctic regions, with important boundary conditions of the Arctic sea ice extent. We finally produce spatiotemporal maps of water-covered area, vegetation condition, and fluxes of greenhouse gases. We mainly focus on Northern Eurasia because there are very limited data on the fluxes of greenhouse gases in the region.
HYdrology, PErmafrost and resilience in Eastern Russian Arctic and Subarctic (HYPE-ERAS)
The main motivations for the project is to synthesize environmental and societal knowledge to answer the needs of federal, republic, and local stakeholders and enhance resilience of infrastructure, human, social and cultural capital in changing conditions of Eastern Russian Arctic and subarctic region – Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) through collaboration of natural and social scientists from Japan, Russian Federation and Sweden. The project aims to improve understanding of the interrelationships among the impacts of climate warming on hydrological regimes, river ice conditions, permafrost thawing, related landscape changes and the corresponding societal challenges of flood hazard, river ice road infrastructure, and loss of agricultural land by ground subsidence. The ultimate goal is to contribute to increased resilience by developing both improved transdisciplinary understandings of the on-going changes as well as guiding documents for sustainable land and water resources management and quantitative models for forecasting and future scenarios, taking into account the knowledge, needs and capacity of stakeholders from local communities and regional authorities. Specifically, a flood and river ice forecasting system will be developed based on improved hydrological modelling taking advantage of the recent increase in availability of climate services and satellite remote sensing data of river conditions.