During the field experiment of winter mesoscale convective systems over the Sea of Japan in 2001 (WMO-01), several snowbands associated with a cold front developed remarkably at 10@30 km off the coast of Hokuriku district on 28 and 29 January 2001. Dual-Doppler radar analysis was made to investigate the mechanisms responsible for the successive development of the snowbands.Derived wind fields revealed that a mesoscale convergence line was formed between the prevailing westerly and shallow (@1 km depth), cold southwesterly winds that blew from inland toward Toyama bay. As the downshear-tilting convective cells in the snowbands approached the convergence line, they became almost upright and their height increased from 4 km to 6@7 km. The edge of the southwesterly cold air temporarily became indistinct because of the entrainment of the air into the convective cells that developed aloft. However, the subsequent advection of the cold southwesterly reestablished the convergence line, and enabled the successive development of following snowbands.

Phosphorus is known to be a limited non-renewable resource. Phosphorus is obtained from phosphate rock, which is likely to be depleted in the next few decades. Therefore, it is very important to find alternate sources of phosphorus from which phosphorus can be recycled and recovered. This study focuses on the recovery of phosphorus from the sludge generated from a continuous bipolar mode electrocoagulation (CBME) system, used for treating a palm oil mill effluent (POME). The sludge generated from the CBME system is leached with oxalic acid and sulphuric acid for phosphorus recovery with and without thermal treatment. Acid leaching was carried out at various time intervals using various liquid/solid (L/S) ratios of acids and sludge. The CBME system caused a 73% removal of phosphorus from POME, where phosphorus is precipitated in sludge as iron phosphates or adsorbed as phosphates depending on the pH in the system. Acid leaching resulted in nearly 85% recovery of phosphorus with both sulphuric acid and oxalic acid for sludge combusted at 900 °C. Statistical analysis was carried out to find the significance of the operational conditions on the phosphorus yield. Acid leaching results in the formation of orthophosphates, which can be used as a raw material for synthesis of chemical fertilizers.