It is known that the aerosol distribution in Asia is complicated due to the increasing emissions of anthropogenic aerosols
in association with economic growth and natural dust significantly varied with the seasons. Therefore it is clear that local
spatially and temporally resolved measurements of atmospheric aerosols in Asian urban city are necessary. Since Osaka,
Kobe, Kyoto, and Nara are located in very close each others (all cities are included in around 70×70 km2 area). The
population of the region is around 13 millions including neighbor prefectures, accordingly air quality in this region is
slightly bad in comparison with the remote area. Furthermore, in recent years, Asian dusts and anthropogenic small
particles some times transported from China and cover these cities throughout year.
DRAGON (Distributed Regional Aerosol Gridded Observation Network) is a project of dense sun/sky radiometer
network in the urban area. The DRAGON-West Japan field campaign was performed over Osaka and neighbor cities
with 7 AERONET instruments from March to end of May in 2012. As results, DRAGON measurements indicate small
differences among the values of AOT over Osaka region.
Combined use of Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) onboard ENVISAT and the mesoscale model MM5 is
proposed in this study to assess offshore wind energy potential. As far as the validation is concerned, 22 ASAR scenes
are processed to estimate wind speed distribution by using CMOD4 and CMOD-IFR2 algorithms over Tanabe Bay,
which is the target area of this study and has an offshore wind observation station. These algorithms require inputs of
relative wind direction, which is usually defined as the ASAR viewing direction relative to the observed wind
direction at the time of ASAR overpass. In this study MM5-simulated wind direction is used as a substitute of the
observed wind direction for calculating relative wind direction, and the estimated wind speeds are compared with
observed wind speeds at the offshore station. RMS errors and biases of CMOD4 and CMOD-IFR2 with inputs of
observed wind direction are 2.05m/s, -0.80m/s and 2.16m/s, -0.54m/s respectively. On the other hand, in the case of
using the MM5-simulated wind direction as a substitute of the observed wind direction, these statistics are 2.28m/s,
-1.16m/s and 2.39m/s, -0.75m/s, respectively. That is, the accuracies of the estimated wind speed using MM5-
simulated wind direction are found to be worse slightly. However, these results indicate that ASAR-based wind
estimation in combination with MM5-simulated wind vectors can be a promising approach for offshore wind
mapping, especially for coastal waters with complicated onshore terrains and coastlines in Japan.
The ballast water exchange at seas has been recognized as one of the operational countermeasures to cope with the
invasion of non-indigenous species through the ballast water. The Bay of Bengal is traditionally considered to have low
chlorophyll-a concentration thus low phytoplankton counts, which is the reason why the Bay of Bengal (BoB) has been
selected as a suitable ballast water exchangeable sea. However an anomalously high K(490) area was found off the coast
of Sri Lanka during the northeast monsoon in 2005, which corresponds to higher plankton cell densities than the
criterion set by the regulation of International Maritime Organization (IMO). The regression equation between K(490)
and corresponding in situ plankton cell densities in the Bay of Bengal is developed to identify suitable ballast water
exchangeable area based on the regulations of IMO. According to the results the central and eastern portions in the Bay
of Bengal during the northeast monsoon season are found to be suitable, while the unsuitable area broadens during the
southwest monsoon season at the western Bay of Bengal. Seasonal and annual variability of K(490) and corresponding
cell density is discussed to establish an early routing system for avoiding the high cell density area in advance.
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