Written by Sig Silber

Lightly Edited at 4:22 pm EDT April 6, 2021, to improve clarity.

Normally, after I publish the NOAA Four-Season forecast, I publish an article where I compare the NOAA and JAMSTEC forecasts. But this past month when it was time to write this article, the JAMSTEC website was down. Normally when that happens it is for a couple of days but it dragged on and now seems to be a situation that may last for a while. So I thought I would take this opportunity to introduce readers to JAMSTEC as I think many are simply not familiar with this organization.

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I. Introduction – What Prompted This Article?

It started like this. I usually write an article comparing the NOAA Four-Season Forecast to the JAMSTEC Three-Season forecast. The NOAA forecast comes out regularly on the third Thursday of the month. The JAMSTEC forecast is not that regular even though it is based on the meteorological conditions on the first day of the Month. In the past, it posted either on the same day as NOAA or a day or two later. Recently it has been posted as much as a week before the NOAA forecast. Thus, sometimes I peek at the JAMSTEC forecast and lately, I have included their short summary in with the article I write on the NOAA forecast which I call Part I.

So you can imagine my chagrin when the JAMSTEC forecast first just looked like it had not been updated and then it started to show up on the far left side of the page rather than being centered and then went blank. What was wrong? Most of the rest of JAMSTEC was working fine. They have never been good at replying to emails so I did not know if it was something at my end or a very temporary problem which is often the case when they do an update. Finally, I think it was March 23, 2021 I found a link that worked and provided a message about the status of the part of JAMSTEC that issues the forecast.

The link was http://www.jamstec.go.jp/e/

I had probably tried 50 URLs before I found one that both worked and contained useful information with respect to the inability to gain access to the SINTEX F forecast. 

That information has changed and there is now if you click on the short link in the graphic (that is not possible in the image above) a further explanation.

I have tremendous respect for this organization so I thought I would take the opportunity to provide some information about the work that JAMSTEC does. I believe that most of their operations are still operational. It is surprising to me that this security breach has not made the news or at least I have not seen it.

Let’s get started.

II. JAMSTEC Operations

But they are not a very large organization.

Here is some more budget information.

Now we look at the organization chart which provides some information on the functions of the various offices.

The above is an image so you can not click on the links but I have done that and it provides some additional information on the functions of the different offices.

And the Kochi Institute.

The Global Oceanographic Data Center

224-3, Toyohara, Nago-shi , Okinawa, Japan

Tel: +81-980-50-0111

Below are some more photos of the research vessels that JAMSTEC utilize

III. Major Achievements of JAMSTEC

From my perspective, which is narrow as I am not familiar with all of the work of JAMSTEC, the major achievement of JAMSTEC was the discovery of the Modoki variety of El Nino. It is usually attributed to Karumuri Ashok.

I am not going to explain in detail what a Modoki is now but the original paper was I believe this.

It is all about the ENSO Cycle.

There are two criteria for determining if we having an El Nino, La Nina, or simply neutral conditions. One of the criteria is the extent of the change in the temperature of surface water along the Equatorial Pacific from what is considered normal. The diagram above shows three different regions of the Equatorial Pacific and a fourth region which is a part of what is called Nino 4 and Nino 3 and this combination of part of Nino 4 and part of Nino 3 is called Nino 3.4. U.S. meteorologists consider that area to be where they look for warmer than usual water (El Nino) or cooler than usual water (La Nina). Some of the Asian meteorologists pay somewhat more attention to Nino 3.

What Ashok found was that El Ninos that formed farther to the west could best be identified with a more complicated formula namely:

This may be for technical information than I should include but there it is:

Subsequent researchers realized there were two kinds of El Nino Modoki. I do not think that this is the first paper written on this subject but it is a good one and there is no paywall. If you are observant you will notice that the paper was funded by and written by someone who worked for NOAA. So one mystery is why the discoveries by Japan, China, and India have not been widely adopted by NOAA in their work even when some of the work was done in cooperation with U.S. researchers.

China and Japan and the US share the Pacific Ocean. And India is on the Indian Ocean which is connected to the Pacific Ocean. I am not saying that these groups do not communicate with each other but I am saying that there is some reluctance by the NOAA to learn from the meteorologists of Asian Nations.

It may simply have to do with the timing of the discoveries…too late to be in the meteorological curriculum of U.S. universities but I think there is more to it than that. U.S. weather is determined more by the Pacific than the Atlantic but the bulk of NOAA facilities are on the East Coast. Certainly, Atlantic Hurricanes and Winter Nor’Easters are important but generally speaking weather in the mid-latitudes moves from west to east so most of U.S. weather is determined by the Pacific Ocean. Thus it would make sense to pay a lot of attention to what the Japanese, Chinese, and Indians have learned about weather.

It is one of the goals of my articles. And it is a major reason that I compare the NOAA forecast for CONUS and Alaska to the JAMSTEC forecast for CONUS and Alaska when I can. I was not able to do that this month.

And I do not want to leave out Australia. They have also contributed mightily to the understanding of the weather of the Pacific. They discovered the Southern Oscillation. Actually, it was mostly Europeans and South Americans (read this) but the Australian Bureau of Meteorology took on the task of monitoring the index given that one of the identified locations was Darwin Australia.

When it comes to understanding weather and climate, it is a Worldwide effort. The Cold War left a gap in our knowledge which is just now beginning to be filled.

In no way am I underestimated the role of European scientists. But tonight I am writing about JAMSTEC.

An example of Recent JAMSTEC research:

I hope you found this interesting. I also hope that JAMSTEC is back on the air soon with their Three-Season worldwide weather forecasts. They have their own model called the SINTEX – F and this past year they have made a number of improvements to that model.

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