Masashi Niwano

Dr. Niwano started his professional carrer as a snow scientist under the guide by his mentor Prof. Teruo Aoki (Former head of the 6th Research Laboratory, Climate Research Department, Meteorological Research Institute, Japan Meteorological Agency) in 2008. Dr. Niwano’s current main research interest is to understand the snow-atmosphere interaction in the cryosphere. For this purpose, he performs in-situ measurements at seasonal snowy area in Japan (e.g., Sapporo, Hokkaido) and the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS), as well as numerical modeling with the Snow Metamorphism and Albedo Process (SMAP) model (Niwano et al., 2012, JGR) developed by him and his colleagues (the SMAP model is the main outcome of his Doctor Thesis). Recently, he is interested in the GrIS climate system, and has stayed on the ice sheet for total 54 days since 2012 to conduct field measurements on atmosphere/snow/ice physical conditions (e.g., Niwano et al., 2015, TC). In 2018, he succeeded in coupling the SMAP model with the Japanese Meteorological Agency’s operational regional non-hydrostatic atmospheric model JMA-NHM, and constructed the regional climate model NHM-SMAP (Niwano et al., 2018, TC). NHM-SMAP has been applied to the Greenland ice sheet, and long term climate simulations by the model have been performed by utilizing the supercomputer of Meteorological Research Institute, Japan Meteorological Agency (FUJITSU PRIMEHPC FX100 and PRIMERGY CX2550M1). Now, he is well versed in climate modeling in the cryosphere. In the spring of 2018, Dr. Niwano, together with two Japanese colleagues, carried out a scientific traverse in the northwestern GrIS to perform in-situ snow/ice physical measurements at different climate conditions and altitudes. In the expedition, he challenged to use a traditional Greenlandic-style dog sledge, which imposes very low burden on the environment compared to helicopters and snowmobiles often used in the GrIS. Finally, the epoch-making challenge succeeded, and he and his colleagues are now analyzing the obtained data.