• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.429-439
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• 2005

The propose of this study is to identify distributional characteristics of winter droughts through occurrence frequencies and to analyze synoptic characteristics on the sea level pressure fields and 500hPa levels in Korea. The regional distributions of winter droughts in occurrence frequency vary according to the monthly regional distributions of the variabilities of precipitation in Korea. In January and December, the eastern parts of Korea where the variabilities of precipitation show high, have high rate of drought frequencies, while the western parts have low rate of it. It means that the regional distribution of the drought frequencies in January and December shows the east-high and west-low pattern, In February the frequencies show the north-high and south-low pattern. In the distributions of the sea-level pressure and 500hPa level height anomalies, the positive anomalies appear around Korean Peninsula and Siberian high area, the negative anomalies on the Aleutian low area and the western parts of North Pacific Ocean during the drought period in January and February. The droughts appear when the inflow of warm and humid air from the south eastern parts blocked by the prevailing pressure patterns of the west-high and east-low. Therefore, the zonal wind of the Korean Peninsula is strong. The droughts of December reflect not only low frequencies of cyclone occurrence, also small inflow of warm and humid air from the southern parts stemming from positive anomalies over whole middle latitude of eastern parts of Asia including Korean Peninsula.