Prof. Tetsuya Sato
The birth of Earth Simulator has given us two tremendous gifts in our lives. First gift which I consider, is the new means of research which lacked in 20th century science, enabling us to clarify the problems regarding the whole evolving process with myriad of factors entwining with one another.
Since an appearance of Descartes and Newton in 17th century, science have been in a direction of breaking down the whole into pieces for more than 300 years, in order to understand nature and its process, principles, and rules composed of basic factors.
With Earth Simulator, we are now able to search in territories where no intellectual creation of human kind was ever possible, being able to understand the Earth with all factors entangling together simultaneously, from micro process of how clouds or snow has been formed, to macro process of atmospheric circulation, as just the way Earth is. I call it the Holistic Simulation.
The second gift I believe is the tool for us to predict precisely of how the global environment will be changed from now on. This directly influences our daily lives.
How will our mass consumption, such as automobiles, airplanes, electric device and chemical products which we have created, influence the futurity of global environment?
Although we have been faced with various forms of highly unusual events such as earthquakes or global warming phenomena, we had never a measure of how to accurately predict what is going to happen in the future.
By means of Earth Simulator, we have come to a point where we can predict the future by recreation of Earth, basing from the present to distant past.
I wish to contribute to ensure people's lives and properties from natural disasters and environmental destructions, and bring forth a harmonized relationship with our mother planet Earth.
