Blog No.93
Author: Yuka Fujii

I am a member of ELSI but have been spending time visiting NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) located in New York City, USA. I have spent 4-5 months in total in NYC, with temporal returns to Tokyo to attend events at ELSI. (For example, I was in Tokyo in mid-January for the ELSI symposium and am back again currently.) I enjoyed my migration between the two cities which enriches my research and my life.

A bit about research... 

At GISS, people have been working on climates of the Earth and other Solar System planets, including atmospheric dynamics, cloud physics, paleo-climate, and recent global warming of the Earth. In particular, a group of people here have been developing a global circulation model (GCM), which enables us to consider 3-dimensional planetary environment that cannot be addressed in canonical 1-dimensional modeling of planetary atmosphere.

My own research interest is in the characterization of exoplanets through astronomical observations and I wanted to gain insights into atmospheres of planets with surface water like Earth. With the generous and friendly help of specialists at GISS, I get to enjoy exploring the dependencies of atmospheric properties on planetary parameters and exploring generalized views of planetary climates useful for future exoplanet investigations. 

Aside from research...

It is fun to live in New York City, as you can imagine!

One of my impressions of New York City is that this is one of few places where foreign visitors are not treated as a mere guest from abroad, or an alien straight from the beginning. For example, I was often spoken to on the streets by strangers who would ask for directions or just to express their emotions at that time. (The same situation would be very unlikely in Japan. People would not ask a foreign visitor for directions!) Everything is in a casual, friendly manner, not too formal and polite as Japanese ryokan (hotel) people are, so I felt like I was a genuine part of the components of this energetic city. This is due mostly to the large traffic here, and also because the city is inherently made up from diverse communities from other countries. Many different lifestyles coexist in NYC, and all of them are usually respected. In that sense, even though I was still halfway to getting used to the lifestyle here, I felt relaxed in daily life because the city made space to accept me.

I enjoy my research and life opportunities in New York City and Tokyo. It would be perfect if jet-lag did not exist...!

Me (leftmost) with the awesome people at GISS!