[ English | Japanese ] [ KOBE University | Graduate School of Science / Faculty of Science | Dept. of Planetology ]
Atmosphere and ocean play important roles in determining the surface environments of the Earth and many of the other planets. The mean surface temperature of the present Earth, for example, is about 15 degree C, and is maintained by the green house effect of the atmosphere and the meridional heat transport due to circulations of the atmosphere and the oceans. Consequently, the surface environment is expected to change when the atmospheric composition and/or the circulations of the atmosphere and the oceans are varied. However, at present, mechanisms which rule the actual changes of the surface environment have not been fully clarified, and therefore an evaluation of possible change is still quite difficult. A surprising fact is that, although there were events like the globally ice covered age, the Earth's surface environment has been relatively stable for about 4.5 billion years to be a planet of nourishing life. It is one the issues to be considered that the stability of the environment has been kept for such a long duration. In our laboratory, we are trying to understand principles that control meteorology and climate systems of the planetary atmospheres and the oceans.
