Abstract
The statistical indexes such as RMSE (Root Mean Square Error), Mean Bias error, and IOA (Index of agreement) are used to evaluate 3 Dimensional wind and temperature fields predicted by operational meteorological model RAMS (Regional Atmospheric Meteorological System) implemented in CARIS (Chemical Accident Response Information System) for the dispersion forecast of hazardous chemicals in case of the chemical accidents in Korea. The operational atmospheric model, RAMS in CARIS are designed to use GDAPS, GTS, and AWS meteorological data obtained from KMA (Korean Meteorological Administration) for the generation of 3-dimensional initial meteorological fields. The predicted meteorological variables such as wind speed, wind direction, temperature, and precipitation amount, during 19 ∼ 23, August 2002, are extracted at the nearest grid point to the meteorological monitoring sites, and validated against the observations located over the Korean peninsula. The results show that Mean bias and Root Mean Square Error are 0.9 (m/s), 1.85 (m/s) for wind speed at 10 m above the ground, respectively, and 1.45 ($^{\circ}C$), 2.82 ($^{\circ}C$) for surface temperature. Of particular interest is the distribution of forecasting error predicted by RAMS with respect to the altitude; relatively smaller error is found in the near-surface atmosphere for wind and temperature fields, while it grows larger as the altitude increases. Overall, some of the overpredictions in comparisons with the observations are detected for wind and temperature fields, whereas relatively small errors are found in the near-surface atmosphere. This discrepancies are partly attributed to the oversimplified spacing of soil, soil contents and initial temperature fields, suggesting some improvement could probably be gained if the sub-grid scale nature of moisture and temperature fields was taken into account. However, IOA values for the wind field (0.62) as well as temperature field (0.78) is greater than the 'good' value criteria (> 0.5) implied by other studies. The good value of IOA along with relatively small wind field error in the near surface atmosphere implies that, on the basis of current meteorological data for initial fields, RAMS has good potentials to be used as a operational meteorological model in predicting the urban or local scale 3-dimensional wind fields for the dispersion forecast in association with hazardous chemical releases in Korea.