Media coverage: 6/21 NHK Sakidori and 6/22 NHK Ohayo Nippon

Our research on super-rapid severe weather prediction was covered by NHK TV program "Sakidori" (サキどり↑) on June 21, 2015, and by NHK TV morning news program "Ohayo Nippon" (おはよう日本) on June 22, 2015.

The NHK "Sakidori" TV crew came to the monthly research meeting with teleconference.

The crew also went to see the K computer.

The "Ohayo Nippon" reporter Mr. Akamatsu came to my office.

The covered contents are posted by the program webpages:
http://www.nhk.or.jp/sakidori/backnumber/150621.html
http://www.nhk.or.jp/ohayou/marugoto/2015/06/0622.html

International Symposium on Data Assimilation 2015

International Symposium on Data Assimilation (ISDA) 2015 was held in RIKEN AICS, Kobe, Japan, on February 23-27, 2015. Total 116 participants include 42 from 10 countries overseas. The symposium was very successful with a lot of interesting talks and active discussions, thanks to all the participants!

The bottom photo includes local organizers from my team. Congratulations to Dr. Keiichi Kondo (front middle), who received the Best Poster Award! Ms. Yukie Komori (left) is greatly acknowledged for her dedicated work leading the symposium to a great success.

BTW, I should have posted this earlier!

Japan Geoscience Union Nishida Prize

It's been a while since the last post. A number of news happened, such as new team members, new research results and publications, and the big "International Symposium on Data Assimilation" in February, but I could not write posts here, which I would like to catch up sometime. Finally, I got motivated enough to share the news: the Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU) Nishida Prize.

On May 27, 2015, the first JpGU Nishida Prize was presented to 10 awardees at the Annual Meeting in Makuhari, Japan. The Prize recognizes mid-career scientists (up to 45 years old) with internationally-recognized outstanding research achievements. The photo, courtesy of Professor M. Satoh, includes three awardees in the field of atmospheric science, Professors Takemura (right) and Watanabe (second from right), and myself (left). Professor Nishida (second from right) was very kind to be in the photo. After the hard work on data assimilation, I would be very grateful for such a renowned recognition as one of the 10 first awardees of the broad geoscience fields.

Student intern

RIKEN AICS started a summer internship program in 2014. Our group accepted three internship students, Mr. Kitano from Hokkaido University (standing, middle), Mr. Kikuchi from Tohoku University (left), and Mr. Taniguchi from Hyogo Prefecture University (right). They joined us on August 29, 2014, and started working on short-term precipitation forecasts purely based on super-rapid 30-second observation data. Dr. Shigenori Otsuka, a researcher (sitting on the right), supervises their research activities. They all have different backgrounds, and I am very happy to see them discuss and help each other to tackle the tough problem. They have been making wonderful progress so far, with a lot of excitement and curiosity. I feel lucky to have this great opportunity to interact with those bright and enthusiastic young scientists.

3rd RIKEN-Kyoto University Joint Workshop on Data Assimilation

The third workshop was held on Monday, July 28, 2014, in Kobe, following the first (blog) and the second. Four mathematicians and seven from my group on the application side discussed about mathematical problems on data assimilation. This time, my group provided several specific problems that we have been facing in our various application research.

Welcome lunch for Drs. Guo-Yuan Lien and Juan Ruiz

On Friday, July 11, 2014, we had a warm welcoming party for Drs. Guo-Yuan Lien (back row, fourth from left) and Juan Ruiz (front row, left most) over lunch in Kachoen. Our lab has been growing consistently by now, with eight full-time scientists and technical staff and three supporting staff in addition to five visiting scientists. Dr. Lien recently graduated from the University of Maryland, and his main focus was precipitation data assimilation in global numerical weather prediction. He will work on Big Data Assimilation (BDA) with the next-generation LES (large-eddy simulation) weather model SCALE. As for Dr. Ruiz, this is his third visit to Japan, and this time, he will stay for three months. He will also work on the BDA project with particular foci on the quality control of the Osaka/Kobe Phased Array Weather Radar and on parameter estimation methods in BDA applications.

Visiting Phased Array Weather Radar in Osaka University

On July 9, 2014, we have visited Professor Ushio at the Osaka University Suita Campus and had a wonderful opportunity to look at the Phased Array Weather Radar (top photo). Professor Ushio was very kind and stopped the radar operation for us to enter the radar dome to look inside. There was a large flat plate barely fitting in the dome. It rotated quite fast, 10 seconds per round. Once Professor Ushio turned on the radar again, we could find some echoes around 50-60 km away, near the maximum range of the radar. The radar image was refreshed amazingly fast, only every 30 seconds.

We are working very hard on using the data from this particular new type of radar most effectively and efficiently, and try to improve the very short-range weather forecasts through "Big Data Assimilation" innovations. Observing the actual radar that we are working on really helped enhance our motivation. What Professor Ushio was saying on TV "Yume-no-tobira" (meaning "Door to Dream") echoed over in our mind: "we just work hard, faithfully and honestly."

Weather station POTEKA II installed at AICS

On June 30, 2014, in collaboration with Meisei Electric, a surface weather station "POTEKA II" developed by Meisei Electric has been installed on the roof of the AICS building, Kobe, Japan. POTEKA II includes a barometer, thermometer, hygrometer, ultrasonic anemometer (the white thing in the middle of the picture), and rain gauge (the black thing on the right). In the picture, we can also find the Kobe Airport island (top left corner). POTEKA II measures these weather variables every 30 seconds and automatically reports to the Meisei server through a commercial mobile phone network. We have also installed the same type of weather stations at seven elementary schools in Kobe. We will investigate how these high-density, high-frequency surface weather measurements could possibly help improve the local severe weather prediction using the K computer.

MEXT Minister Prize

On April 15, 2014, I had the honor to receive the Young Scientists' Prize from the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). This is the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/26/04/1346090.htm
http://www.riken.jp/pr/topics/2014/20140415_2/

New team webpage just launched

I am really excited about our new team webpage just launched!
http://data-assimilation.jp/

Dr. Hazuki Arakida is in charge of the team www and did a great job of creating the fancy webpage. Thank you, Arakida-san!

Professor Norihiko Sugimoto visited RIKEN/AICS

On March 25, 2014, Professor Norihiko Sugimoto from Keio University visited my lab in Kobe. Professor Sugimoto is my long-time friend from College, since we were in the same program in the physics department at Kyoto University. Professor Sugimoto visited us just before his departure for Paris to spend two years in Ecole Polytechnique. We had a lot of discussions about research and other things. We also enjoyed observing the K computer. Wish him a fruitful stay in Paris and the very best of his success!

Professor Brian Hunt visited Kobe

On March 18, 2014, Professor Brian Hunt of the University of Maryland visited my lab in Kobe. The group photo with the K computer includes Professor Hunt (third from left), me (fourth from right) and lab members. Professor Hunt is well known for the Local Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter (Hunt et al. 2007, Physica D) developed at the University of Maryland, Weather-Chaos group. Professor Hunt is a math professor and one of the founding members of the interdisciplinary Weather-Chaos group. We had very fruitful discussions of our recent progress on data assimilation research. After our meeting in the afternoon, Professor Hunt and I headed to Kyoto to attend a workshop on Math-Meteorology collaboration and Big Data Assimilation in Meteorology. This workshop was also the second RIKEN-Kyoto University joint workshop on data assimilation, and I will describe it sometime soon.

Farewell lunch for Dr. Juan Ruiz

On March 6, 2014, we had a joyful farewell lunch at Kachoen for Dr. Juan Ruiz with a lot of smiles! Juan's second visit to our lab for a month this time has been very successful as always. He has been making amazing progress on the quality control and observation operator for Phased Array Weather Radar and Doppler Lidar observations. I am hoping that we will be ready sometime soon to publicize these wonderful achievements.

Team Logo!

We are very excited about our new team logo of the Data Assimilation Research Team. Dr. Hazuki Arakida is in charge of the team webpage and designed the team logo. The circle on top right and the square at bottom left are merging (assimilating?). The bright red square/circle is my idea, adding a good spice to the logo (in my opinion).

Lab members in January 2014

This picture includes our new members, Drs. Steve Penny and Shunji Kotsuki. Dr. Penny is visiting from the University of Maryland for a month, generously supported by a very competitive JSPS fellowship program. He is studying particle filtering methods suitable for high-dimensional spatio-temporal chaos. Dr. Kotsuki just started in January as a full-time team member. He studies data assimilation for hydrological cycle.

Lab members in December 2013

We have more rapid changes in my lab than the quarterly updates. Africa Perianez (fourth from left) of German Weather Service (DWD) is visiting from Thursday, December 5 to Friday 13, 2013. We started collaborations on theoretical developments of localization methods and other topics in ensemble data assimilation. Also, Ms. Yukie Komori (second from right) is our new assistant. This picture includes everyone in the lab except for some Visiting Researchers, Drs. Juan Ruiz, Shu-Chih Yang, and Masahiro Sawada.

Lab members for 2013 fourth quarter

Team photo as of November 7, 2013 at the welcome party in Kachoen. We are expanding. Seven members are in the picture, and there are four more visiting members not in the picture. New members include Dr. Hazuki Arakida (front left), Mr. Marimo Ohhigashi (back, second from left), and Ms. Rie Deguchi (front right).

RIKEN-Kyoto University Joint Workshop on Data Assimilation

On August 9, 2013, we had the first RIKEN-Kyoto University Joint Workshop on Data Assimilation in RIKEN AICS, Kobe, Japan. The workshop webpage is available only in Japanese, since we intended to exchange ideas among Japanese scientists in both sides.

Data assimilation requires interdisciplinary developments based on statistics and applied mathematics, and it is essential to make a productive collaboration between mathematicians and scientists in application fields. Fortunately, I got to know Professor Sakajo a few years ago in Sapporo, and since then we have been exchanging ideas. Recently I moved from Maryland to Kobe, and Professor Sakajo also moved from Sapporo to Kyoto. We now have this geographical advantage, and try to make our collaborations more active and productive. This is the first workshop to have mathematicians from Professor Sakajo's group and scientists in my group get together, exchange ideas and have active discussions.

We are planning the second workshop in Kyoto in March 18-20, with a prestigious invited speaker Professor Brian Hunt from the University of Maryland.

Two new members

We have two new members starting on August 1, 2013. Professor Shu-Chih Yang (right) is a professor in Taiwanese National Central University and is visiting my lab until mid September as a Visiting Scientist. Dr. Koji Terasaki (left) joined my lab as a Postdoctoral Researcher.

Lab members for 2013 second quarter

Team photo as of May 29, 2013. Prof. Shinichiro Shima (left) from the University of Hyogo and Dr. Masahiro Sawada (second from right) from the University of Tokyo just started in May as visiting scientists. Also, Ms. Naomi Tamura (right), an assistant to the DA team is in the picture, and another assistant Ms. Yuri Iida was very kind and took this nice picture. Dr. Shigenori Otsuka (second from left), myself (third from left), and Keiichi Kondo (third from right) are also in the picture.