Department of Physical Meteorology Research
Fourth Laboratory
Summary Account
The cryosphere is vulnerable to climate change and highly sensitive to global warming. Drastic melting of snow and ice has recently been observed in the Arctic and elsewhere, but the accuracy of related projection and reanalysis remains insufficient. In this study, efforts will be made to better understand changes in the cryosphere by observing snow physical parameters such as grain size and impurity concentration with ground-based instruments and by monitoring them from space via satellite remote sensing. The results will be used to improve snow/ice physical process models, including the radiative process of snow/ice and the snow metamorphism process in climate models, which could contribute to clarify the mechanism behind changes in the cryosphere and improve the prediction accuracy.
