Climate Change Projections

This chapter assesses the effects of global warming on the climate of Japan. Japan is an archipelago extending in a southwest-northeast direction to the east of the Eurasian continent embracing the Japan Sea. High mountain ranges in the central part of the biggest island, Honshu, cause diverse climate conditions over Japan. The major features of Japan’s climate are the winter and summer monsoons, the two rainy seasons such as the Bai-u season (the early-summer rainy period) and the Shurin season (autumn rainy period) and the typhoons (tropical storms). Possible changes in these features due to global warming are of much concern. Our current knowledge is not so advanced as to make definite assessments on the changes in the above mentioned features or the regional-scale climate change over Japan due to global warming. In this chapter, however, we tried to review state-of-the-art studies as far as possible and to assess the potential effects of global warming on Japan’s climate, including qualitative estimates. The principal results of this chapter are summarized as follows.

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