• Atmosphere
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.111-120
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• 2008

This study presents a change-point in the 30 years (1976-2005) time series of the annual and the heavy precipitation characteristics (amount, days and intensity) averaged over South Korea using Bayesian approach. The criterion for the heavy precipitation used in this study is 80 mm/day. Using non-informative priors, the exact Bayes estimators of parameters and unknown change-point are obtained. Also, the posterior probability and 90% highest posterior density credible intervals for the mean differences between before and after the change-point are examined. The results show that a single change-point in the precipitation intensity and the heavy precipitation characteristics has occurred around 1996. As the results, the precipitation intensity and heavy precipitation characteristics have clearly increased after the change-point. However, the annual precipitation amount and days show a statistically insignificant single change-point model. These results are consistent with earlier works based on a simple linear regression model.

• Atmosphere
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.199-211
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• 2009

In this paper, we examine the multiple change-point and change pattern in the 54 years (1954-2007) time series of the annual and the heavy precipitation characteristics (amount, days and intensity) averaged over South Korea. A Bayesian approach is used for detecting of mean and/or variance changes in a sequence of independent univariate normal observations. Using non-informative priors for the parameters, the Bayesian model selection is performed by the posterior probability through the intrinsic Bayes factor of Berger and Pericchi (1996). To investigate the significance of the changes in the precipitation characteristics between before and after the change-point, the posterior probability and 90% highest posterior density credible intervals are examined. The results showed that no significant changes have occurred in the annual precipitation characteristics (amount, days and intensity) and the heavy precipitation intensity. On the other hand, a statistically significant single change has occurred around 1996 or 1997 in the heavy precipitation days and amount. The heavy precipitation amount and days have increased after the change-point but no changes in the variances.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.234-234
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• 2015

The global patterns of annual and extreme precipitation are projected to be altered by climate change. There are various weather systems which bring precipitation (e.g. tropical cyclone, extratropical cyclone, etc.). It is possible in some regions that multiple weather systems affect the changes of precipitation. However, previous studies have assessed only the changes of precipitation associated with individual weather systems. The relative contributions of the weather systems to the changes of precipitation have not been quantified yet. Also, the changes of the relative importance of weather systems have not been assessed. This study present the quantitative estimates of 1) the relative contributions of weather systems (tropical cyclone (TC), extratropical cyclone (ExC), and "others") to the future changes of annual and extreme precipitation and 2) the changes of the proportions of precipitation associated with each weather system in annual and extreme precipitation based on CMIP5 generation GCM outputs. Weather systems are objectively detected from twelve GCM outputs and six models are selected for further analysis considering the reproducibility of weather systems. In general, the weather system which is dominant in terms of producing precipitation in the present climate contributes the most to the changes of annual and extreme precipitation in each region. However, there are exceptions for the tendency. In East Asia, "others", which ranks the second in the proportion of annual precipitation in present climate, has the largest contribution to the increase of annual precipitation. It was found that the increase of the "others" annual precipitation in East Asia is mainly explained by the changes of that in summer season (JJA), most of which can be regarded as the summer monsoon precipitation. In Southeast Asia, "others" precipitation, the second dominant system in the present climate, has the largest contribution to the changes of very heavy precipitation (>99.9 percentile daily precipitation of historical period). Notable changes of the proportions of precipitation associated with each weather system are found mainly in subtropics, which can be regarded as the "hotspot" of the precipitation regime shift.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.433-449
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• 2006

Temporal and spatial variations of precipitation in South Korea are investigated using 60 observation data of the recent 30-years from 1976 to 2005. The area averaged annual precipitation amount is about 1310 mm and shows a strong spatial variation, maximum at the southern and Kyoungki province (>1300 mm) and minimum at the Kyungpook province(<1100 mm). The precipitation days show a strong spatial variation with maximum at the Sobaik mountain region(>100 days) and minimum at the Kyungpook province (<90 days). The interannual variations (IAV) of precipitation amount and days are more significant at the southern and eastern part of Sobaik and Taebaik mountain, and along the Sobaik mountain, respectively. So, the difference of annual precipitation amount reaches to about 800mm between wet and dry years at the southern part of Korean peninsula. Whereas, the IAV of precipitation intensity is strong at the southern and middle part of South Korea with a minimum between two maxima. Also, seasonal variations are closely linked with the geographic environments (elevation, distance from ocean, location relative to the Taebaik mountain). Therefore, maximum and minimum of seasonal variations of precipitation are occurred at the northern inland region (ratio of summer to the annual precipitation (RSAP) is greater than 60%), eastern and southern coastal regions (RSAP is less than 53%),respectively. And the RSAP is slightly increased from 50% to 55% comparing the Ho and Kang (1988). The consistent and strong positive relation between the heavy rainfalls, the ratio of heavy rainfalls to annual precipitation and the annual precipitation indicates that heavy rainfall is more frequent and strong at the maximum annual precipitation region.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.717-723
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• 1998

The concentrations and wet deposition flux into the sea of heavy metals of precipitation in Pusan area were measured and estimated. The samples were collected by polyethylene bottle(30ι) from January to November in 1996, and heavy metals were analyzed by atomic absorption spectrometer. The concentration order of heavy metals was Al ＞Fe ＞Zn ＞Pb ＞Mn ＞Cu ＞Ni ＞Cd ＞Co, and they were high at inland sites and low at coastal sites. The enrichment factors for some metals(Zn, Cu, Pb, Cd), based on crustal Al, were significantly greater than unity, and the order was Cd ＞ Pb ＞ Zn ＞ Cu. This evidence suggests Cd and Pb are derived predominantly from non-crustal sources. Al, Fe and Mn contents showed good correlation with each other. Therefore this enrichment factor indicates similar geochemical behavior of these elements. The annual wet depositional flux(mg/ $m^2$ /yr) from Pl site was as follows: Al(121.1). Fe,(177.2), Zn(12.9), Mn(6.19), Pb(14.4), Cu(0.64), Ni(1.03), Cd(1.02) and Co(1.01).

• Atmosphere
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.135-148
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• 2022

This study investigates the influence of atmospheric river (AR) on precipitation over South Korea with a focus on regional characteristics. The 42-year-long catalog of ARs, which is obtained by applying the automatic AR detection algorithm to ERA5 reanalysis data and the insitu precipitation data recorded at 56 weather stations across the country are used to quantify their relationship. Approximately 51% of the climatological annual precipitation is associated with AR. The AR-related precipitation is most pronounced in summer by approximately 58%, while only limited fraction of precipitation (26%) is AR-related in winter. The heavy precipitation (> 30 mm day^-1) is more prone to AR activity (59%) than weak precipitation (5~30 mm day^-1; 33%) in all seasons. By grouping weather stations into the four sub-regions based on orography, it is found that the contribution of AR precipitation to the total is largest in the southern coast (57%) and smallest in the eastern coast (36%). Similar regional variations in AR precipitation fractions also occur in weak precipitation events. The regional contrast between the northern and southern stations is related to the seasonal variation of AR-frequency. In addition, the regional contrast between the western and eastern stations is partly modulated by the orographic forcing. The fractional contribution of AR to heavy precipitation exceeds 50% in all seasons, but this is true only in summer along the eastern coast. This result indicates that ARs play a critical role in heavy precipitation in South Korea, thus routine monitoring of ARs is needed for improving operational hydrometeorological forecasting.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.2B
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• pp.141-153
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• 2009

The occurrence causes of the extreme rainfall to happen in Korea can be distinguished with the typhoons and local downpours. The typhoon events attacked irregularly to induce the heavy rainfall, and the local downpour events mean a seasonal rain front and a local rainfall. Almost every year, the typhoons and local downpours that induced a heavy precipitation be generated extreme disasters like a flooding. Consequently, in this research, There were distinguished the causes of heavy rainfall events with the typhoons and the local downpours at Korea. Also, probability precipitation was computed according to the causes of the local downpour events. An evaluation of local downpours can be used for analysis of heavy rainfall event in short period like a flash flood. The methods of calculation of probability precipitation used the parametric frequency analysis and the Empirical Simulation Technique (EST). The correlation analysis was computed between annual maximum precipitation by local downpour events and sea surface temperature, moisture index for composition of input vectors. At the results of correlation analysis, there were revealed that the relations closely between annual maximum precipitation and sea surface temperature. Also, probability precipitation using EST are bigger than probability precipitation of frequency analysis on west-middle areas in Korea. Therefore, region of west-middle in Korea should prepare the extreme precipitation by local downpour events.

• Atmosphere
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.85-95
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• 2016

In this study, we investigated the variabilities of wind speed of 850 hPa and precipitable water over the East Asia region using the NCEP Final Analysis data from December 2001 to November 2011. A large variance of wind speed was observed in northern and eastern China during the winter period. During summer, the regions of the East China Sea, the South Sea of Japan and the East Sea show large variances in the wind speed caused by an extended North Pacific High and typhoon activities. The large variances in the wind speed in the regions are shown to be correlated with the inter-annual variability of precipitable water over the inland region of windward side of the Korean Peninsula. Based on the investigation, sensitivity tests to the domain size were performed using the WRF model version 3.6 for heavy precipitation events over the Korean Peninsula for 26 and 27 July 2011. Numerical experiments of different domain sizes were set up with 5 km horizontal and 50 levels vertical resolutions for the control and the first experimental run, and 9 km horizontal for the second experimental run. We found that the major rainfalls correspond to shortwave troughs with baroclinic structure over Northeast China and extended North Pacific High. The correlation analysis between the observation and experiments for 1-h precipitation indicated that the second experiment with the largest domain had the best performance with the correlation coefficient of 0.79 due to the synoptic-scale systems such as short-wave troughs and North Pacific High.

• Atmosphere
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.85-97
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• 2018

This study evaluates the performance of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model in reproducing the present-day (1981~2005) precipitation over Far East Asia and South Korea. The WRF model is configured with 25-km horizontal resolution within the context of the COordinated Regional climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) - East Asia Phase 2. The initial and lateral boundary forcing for the WRF simulation are derived from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast Interim reanalysis. According to our results, WRF model shows a reasonable performance to reproduce the features of precipitation, such as seasonal climatology, annual and inter-annual variabilities, seasonal march of monsoon rainfall and extreme precipitation. In spite of such model's ability to simulate major features of precipitation, systematic biases are found in the downscaled simulation in some sub-regions and seasons. In particular, the WRF model systematically tends to overestimate (underestimate) precipitation over Far East Asia (South Korea), and relatively large biases are evident during the summer season. In terms of inter-annual variability, WRF shows an overall smaller (larger) standard deviation in the Far East Asia (South Korea) compared to observation. In addition, WRF overestimates the frequency and amount of weak precipitation, but underestimates those of heavy precipitation. Also, the number of wet days, the precipitation intensity above the 95 percentile, and consecutive wet days (consecutive dry days) are overestimated (underestimated) over eastern (western) part of South Korea. The results of this study can be used as reference data when providing information about projections of fine-scale climate change over East Asia.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.843-857
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• 2008

This study analyzed distribution of natural disaster and trend of related climatic elements in mountainous region of Gangwon-do. In mountainous region of Gangwon-do, there have been 27 natural disasters of which heavy rainfall have the leading cause for the last 5 years(16 times in 2003-2007). It has been 9 natural disasters in Jinbu-myeon Pyeongchang-gun, the most frequent area. The mountainous region has been larger natural damage than its surrounding regions and there has been more damage at higher altitudes. While the heavy rainfall have caused damage over the northwest of mountains, most typhoons have damaged southern part of mountains. Most mountainous region suffers from strong wind but damage by snow is small. In mountainous region of Gangwon-do, annual precipitation, intensity of precipitation and heavy rainfall days have been increasing since 2000 and this tendency is significant in its intensity. However, annual snowfall, snowfall days and heavy snowfall days have been clearly decreasing since 2000. In case heavy rainfall accompanies strong wind, the damages are larger in mountainous region of Gangwon-do. Therefore it is important to be prepared for heavy rainfall and strong wind.