Abstracts for the 5th International GAME Conf.
3-5 October 2001
Aichi Trade Center
Nagoya Japan
Study of Local and Large-Scale Monsoon Circulation in the Eastern Highland Himalayas
Massimo Bollasina (1), Laura Bertolani (1), Gianni Tartari (3)
(1) Epson Meteo Center
(3) Water Research Institute/CNR
In 1990, following an agreement between the Italian National Research Concil and the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (RONAST), a Laboratory/Observatory was installed at the foot of Mount Everest at an altitude of 5010 m by the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and the Ev-K2-CNR Committee. The structure, pyramidal shaped, is located in one of the most remote areas of the Earth. The "Ev-K2-CNR" research project subsequently developed was extended to numerous scientific disciplines (medicine and physiology, earth sciences, technology, environmental sciences, meteorology, etc.) and it has become an important part of Italian remote-area scientific activity. An Automatic Weather Station (AWS) was also installed at 5050 m near the Laboratory and it has been recording bi-hourly data since the end of 1993. In 1998, a scientific collaboration involving three different organisations within the Ev-K2-CNR Project (IRSA/CNR, the Epson Meteo Center and the Ev-K2-CNR Committee) was formalised, leading to the formation of a research team named "Pyramid MeteoGroup" which carries on meteorological researches. The bi-hourly data recorded at the Pyramid Meteorological Station have permitted to gather a deep knowledge of the Asian monsoon and of its characteristics at high altitude. The dataset collected, merged with daily and monthly gridded dataset from NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis, made it possible to clearly outline the main characteristics of the monsoon at high altitude (onset and withdrawal mean dates, description of the type of monsoon precipitation and of the prevalent wind circulation), and to highlight large-scale features related to intraseasonal (active/break phases) and interannual (the Tropospheric Biennial Oscillation) variability of the Asian monsoon during the last years. The area investigated revealed its importance also as a climate change observatory.
Observational studies will be strongly developed by the end of 2001 with the establishment of a network of high altitude AWSs along the Khumbu Valley, which is well influenced by monsoon winds toward Tibet. The first of these AWSs has been successfully installed in November 2000 near the old one and its hourly data have been recently validated.
On field data acquisition is merged with numerical model simulations by means of a nested chain of spectral models starting from a 1°x1° general circulation model (GCM) to a high-resolution (0.25°x0.25°) regional model over the Himalayas. A sensitivity analysis to surface parameters such as vegetation type, vegetation fraction and soil type is currently being performed and seasonal simulations with prescribed sea-surface temperatures are under analysis.
Future researches will be conducted improving existing collaborations and promoting new ones with International Institutes, trying to develop interdisciplinarity among different environmental disciplines, such as glaciology, hydrochemistry and limnology. The final aim is to realise a numerical model coupled with the meteorological module and able to explain the transport and dispersion of pollutants measured in samples collected on fresh snow cover, rainfall and in the lacustrine sediments.
Submittal Information
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via Pisa 250, 20099 Sesto S. Giovanni, Milan | |
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massimo.bollasina@epson-meteo.org | |