Prof. Toshio Yamagata

 Application Laboratory, JAMSTEC, Institute for Climate and Application Research, NUIST
Room 1218, Building 3, IAP

15:30, Aug 30, 2019 

In the summer of 2018, the Japanese islands were attacked by the extreme events called heatwaves. This was related to the equatorial Indian Ocean Dipole. In retrospect, similar heatwaves attacked the Japanese islands in 1994, and the search of its origin led us to discovery of the Indian Ocean Dipole. In the summer of 2004, despite the claim of El Ni？o which may bring a cool summer, heatwaves attacked the Japanese islands, too. In the process of exploring the cause of this, we discovered the El Ni？o Modoki. The summer condition in the tropics in 2019 looks like those in 1994, 2004 and 2018. Because of the similarity between coastal coupled dynamics and equatorial coupled dynamics, we expect coastal climate modes generating regional extreme events. I will touch on both basin-wide and regional climate modes because of their importance in generating extreme events with vast societal impacts.

Toshio Yamagata graduated from Geophysics Institute of School of Science, the University of Tokyo in 1971. His professional career includes Associate Professor of Kyushu University, Professor and Dean of School of Science, the University of Tokyo. After retiring from the University of Tokyo in 2012, he was elected as Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo, and then he served the Japan Agency of Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) for 5 years as Director of Application Laboratory. He is currently affiliated with JAMSTEC as Project Principal Scientist, Kyoto University as Project Professor, and the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology as Honorable Professor/Foreign Academician. He is known particularly as a discoverer of the Indian Ocean Dipole influencing the world climate. For his international achievements in ocean and climate dynamics, he received many honors and prestigious awards.