Research Outline

The program ‘A01’ consists of three research projects: A01-1 ‘Antarctic ice sheet-ocean interactions in the era of global warming (ocean group),’ A01-2 ‘ Interactions in Antarctic and global atmosphere-ocean-geochemical cycles (atmosphere and material cycle group)’ and A01-3 ‘ Unraveling spatio-temporal variations of the Antarctic ice sheet mass balance and its governing mechanisms (ice-sheet mass balance group)’.

This program focuses on a relatively short timescale covering the past few decades to the present/near future when anthropogenic global warming has been more evident and aims to clarify the mechanisms of abrupt changes of the East Antarctic ice sheet based on the understanding of the local to regional changes and interactions of the ocean and atmospheric/material circulations causing the fluctuations of the accumulation, ice flows, and melting of the ice sheets with a wide variety of observations and numerical modeling from the Antarctic continent to the Southern Ocean. Also, implement links between observations and ecosystem modeling concerning ocean circulation and carbon/material cycle changes that drive feedback to global climate change.