• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.153-163
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• 2017

The objective of this study is to enhance the model's speed of estimating weather variables (e.g., minimum/maximum temperature, sunshine hour, PRISM (Parameter-elevation Regression on Independent Slopes Model) based precipitation), which are applied to the Agrometeorological Early Warning System (http://www.agmet.kr). The current process of weather estimation is operated on high-performance multi-core CPUs that have 8 physical cores and 16 logical threads. Nonetheless, the server is not even dedicated to the handling of a single county, indicating that very high overhead is involved in calculating the 10 counties of the Seomjin River Basin. In order to reduce such overhead, several cache and parallelization techniques were used to measure the performance and to check the applicability. Results are as follows: (1) for simple calculations such as Growing Degree Days accumulation, the time required for Input and Output (I/O) is significantly greater than that for calculation, suggesting the need of a technique which reduces disk I/O bottlenecks; (2) when there are many I/O, it is advantageous to distribute them on several servers. However, each server must have a cache for input data so that it does not compete for the same resource; and (3) GPU-based parallel processing method is most suitable for models such as PRISM with large computation loads.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.317-325
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• 2015

An adequate downscaling of synoptic forecasts is a prerequisite for improved agrometeorological service to rural areas in South Korea where complex terrains and small farms are common. In this study, geospatial schemes based on topoclimatology were used to scale down the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) temperature forecasts to the local scale (~30 m) across a rural catchment. Then, using these schemes, local temperatures were estimated at 14 validation sites at 0600 and 1500 LST in 2013/2014 and were compared with the observations. The estimation errors were substantially reduced for both 0600 and 1500 LST temperatures when compared against the uncorrected KMA products. The improvement was most notable at low lying locations for the 0600 temperature and at the locations on west- and south-facing slopes for the 1500 LST temperature. Using the downscaled real-time temperature data, a pilot service has started to provide the field-specific weather information tailored to meet the requirements of small-scale farms. For example, the service system makes a daily outlook on the phenology of crop species grown in a given field using the field-specific temperature data. When the temperature forecast is given for next morning, a frost risk index is calculated according to a known relationship of phenology and frost injury. If the calculated index is higher than a pre-defined threshold, a warning is issued and delivered to the grower's cellular phone with relevant countermeasures to help protect crops against frost damage.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.79-86
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• 2011

Cold-air drainage and pooling occur in most mountain valleys at night. Local climates with cold-air pooling could affect phenology and distribution of crop plants. A high resolution infrared imaging radiometer was used to visualize the cold-air drainage and thermal belt formation over a small mountainous watershed (ca. $10{\times}5{\times}1$ km for the maximum length${\times}$width${\times}$depth). Thermal images on $640{\times}480$ pixels were scanned across the Akyang valley (south of Mt. Jiri National Park) by the radiometer installed at a local peak ('Hyongjebong', 1,117 m a.s.l.) at dawn of 17 May 2011, when the synoptic condition was favorable for the surface cooling and cold-air drainage. Major findings are: (1) Cold-air drainage and accumulation was clearly identified by the lowest brightness temperature mainly at the valley bottom. (2) So-called 'thermal belt' with higher brightness temperature was found partway up the valley sidewalls and showed up to $5^{\circ}C$ departure from the valley bottom temperature. (3) Digital thermography showed feasibility for validation of the high definition geospatial temperature models currently in use for the plot-specific agrometeorological service.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2007

The use of information on natural resources is indispensable to most agricultural activities to avoid disasters, to improve input efficiency, and to increase lam income. Most information is prepared and managed at a spatial scale called the "Hydrologic Unit" (HU), which means watershed or small river basin, because virtually every environmental problem can be handled best within a single HU. South Korea consists of 840 such watersheds and, while other watershed-specific information is routinely managed by government organizations, there are none responsible for agricultural weather and climate. A joint research team of Kyung Hee University and the Agriculture, forestry and Fisheries Information Service has begun a 4-year project funded by the Ministry of Agriculture and forestry to establish a watershed-specific agricultural weather information service based on "high definition" digital climate maps (HD-DCMs) utilizing the state of the art geospatial climatological technology. For example, a daily minimum temperature model simulating the thermodynamic nature of cold air with the aid of raster GIS and microwave temperature profiling will quantify effects of cold air drainage on local temperature. By using these techniques and 30-year (1971-2000) synoptic observations, gridded climate data including temperature, solar irradiance, and precipitation will be prepared for each watershed at a 30m spacing. Together with the climatological normals, there will be 3-hourly near-real time meterological mapping using the Korea Meteorological Administration's digital forecasting products which are prepared at a 5 km by 5 km resolution. Resulting HD-DCM database and operational technology will be transferred to local governments, and they will be responsible for routine operations and applications in their region. This paper describes the project in detail and demonstrates some of the interim results.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.76-84
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• 2013

An adequate downscaling of the official forecasts of Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) is a prerequisite to improving the value and utility of agrometeorological information in rural areas, where complex terrain and small farms constitute major features of the landscape. In this study, we suggest a simple correction scheme for scaling down the KMA temperature forecasts from mesoscale (5 km by 5 km) to the local scale (30 m by 30 m) across a rural catchment, especially under temperature inversion conditions. The study area is a rural catchment of $50km^2$ area with complex terrain and located on a southern slope of Mountain Jiri National Park. Temperature forecasts for 0600 LST on 62 days with temperature inversion were selected from the fall 2011-spring 2012 KMA data archive. A geospatial correction scheme which can simulate both cold air drainage and the so-called 'thermal belt' was used to derive the site-specific temperature deviation across the study area at a 30 m by 30 m resolution from the original 5 km by 5 km forecast grids. The observed temperature data at 12 validation sites within the study area showed a substantial reduction in forecast error: from ${\pm}2^{\circ}C$ to ${\pm}1^{\circ}C$ in the mean error range and from $1.9^{\circ}C$ to $1.6^{\circ}C$ in the root mean square error. Improvement was most remarkable at low lying locations showing frequent cold pooling events. Temperature prediction error was less than $2^{\circ}C$ for more than 80% of the observed inversion cases and less than $1^{\circ}C$ for half of the cases. Temperature forecasts corrected by this scheme may accelerate implementation of the freeze and frost early warning service for major fruits growing regions in Korea.