Objectives of This Research Area

Rapid economical growth in East Asia causes consumption of vast amount of fossil fuel for energy source, which is quite different from a harmonized development with the environment. Emission of green house gases such as CO₂, acidic gases such as NOx and SO₂, as well as particulate matter affects the environment of the source country, surrounding countries, and more over, whole northern hemisphere. Not only regional but global scale atmospheric environmental problems have arisen. Among these atmospheric pollutants, aerosols attract special attention these days, because there are many unclear points; for example, aerosol spatial distribution, formation mechanisms in the atmosphere, quantitative evaluation of environmental impacts, and so on. Human health, in particular, has the highest priority to be protected, so that the assessment of the impacts on human health is urgently needed. In addition, the impacts on vegetation, which is an important CO₂ sink, are also a very urgent issue to be investigated from a point of view of global warming, too.

Among aerosol particles secondary particles produced by gas to particle conversion exist in fine particle regime called PM_2.5 and such fine particles affect human health significantly. Although primary aerosols are still serious environmental problems in Asia, secondary aerosols and photochemical ozone became more and more important issue. Impact assessment and proposal of mitigation measures connected with measures for global warming are urgently needed.

This research area is aiming at elucidating the environmental impacts of aerosols of East Asian origin and creating a new area of scientific research beyond the conventional aerosol-related framework, which is essential for decision making on solving urgent environmental problems. For this purpose, this research area consists of four research items. Namely, A01: Evaluation of Aerosol Formation and the Emission Sources, A02: Elucidation of Transport and Distribution of Aerosols and Air Pollutants in East Asia, A03: Elucidation of the Impacts of Aerosols on Plants, and A04: Elucidation of the Impacts of Aerosols on Human Health. Process studies to be performed in A01 and A02 and impact studies to be performed in A03 and A04 will be made in closer cooperation.

In A01 and A02 the processes of emission, transformation, and deposition of aerosols from East Asia will be accessed and clarified. The results are utilized in A03 and A04 for investigating the present impacts. Then, their results are feed backed to A01 for evaluation of the future impact. The goal is to provide scientific data that become the basis of the environmental standards for setting emission measures under international cooperation and to lead to proposals concerning those issues.

So far, the exacerbation of air pollution by aerosols according to rapid economic growth in East Asia and impacts of various atmospheric pollutants on plants and/or human health have been studied independently. Therefore, even though various field observation data were very interesting and important from a point of view of earth science, it is hard to say that they were utilized to study the impacts of aerosols. Meanwhile, a lot of experiments have been done, e.g., to expose plants or animals to air pollutants and particulate matter, but they were mainly targeted local pollution and those targeted global or regional pollution were quite limited. By deepening the research collaboration with researchers in this area, it can contribute to build up a closer relationship among the researchers in different fields and to raise the academic level of this area.