• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.9
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• pp.529-541
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• 2023

Due to the growing concern over forecasting extreme weather events such as droughts caused by climate change, there has been a rising interest in seasonal meteorological forecasts that offer ensemble predictions for the upcoming seven months. Nonetheless, limited research has been conducted in South Korea, particularly in assessing their effectiveness at the catchment-scale. In this study, we assessed the accuracy of ECMWF's seasonal forecasts (including precipitation, temperature, and evapotranspiration) for the period of 2011 to 2020. We focused on 12 multi-purpose reservoir catchments and compared the forecasts to climatology data. Continuous Ranked Probability Skill Score method is adopted to assess the forecast skill, and the linear scaling method was applied to evaluate its impact. The results showed that while the seasonal meteorological forecasts have similar skill to climatology for one month ahead, the skill decreased significantly as the forecast lead time increased. Compared to the climatology, better results were obtained in the Wet season than the Dry season. In particular, during the Wet seasons of the dry years (2015, 2017), the seasonal meteorological forecasts showed the highest skill for all lead times.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.57 no.9
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• pp.571-583
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• 2024

Forecasting dam inflows in the medium to long term is crucial for effective dam operation and the prevention of water-related disasters such as floods and droughts. However, the increasing frequency of extreme weather events due to climate change has made hydrological forecasting more challenging. Since 2000, seasonal weather forecasts, which provide predictions for weather variables up to about seven months ahead, and their hydrological interpretation, known as Seasonal Flow Forecasts (SFFs) have gained significant global interest. This study utilises seasonal weather forecasts from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), converting them into inflow forecasts using a hydrological model for 12 multipurpose dams in South Korea from 2011 to 2020. We then compare the performance of these SFFs with the Ensemble Streamflow Prediction (ESP). Our results indicate that while SFFs are more effective for short-term predictions of 1-2 months, ESP outperforms SFFs for long-term predictions. Seasonally, the performance of SFFs is higher in October-November but lower from December to February. Moreover, our findings demonstrate that SFFs are highly effective in quantitatively predicting dry conditions, although they tend to underestimate inflows under wet conditions.