• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.1-11
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• 2022

Recently, climate change has been regarded as a major cause of large-scale forest fires worldwide, and there is concern that more frequent and severe forest fires will occur due to the level of greenhouse gas emissions. In this study, the daily Keetch and Byram Drought Index (KBDI) of the Baekdudaegan in Chungcheong region including Sobaeksan, Songnisan, and Woraksan National Parks were calculated to assess effect of climate change on the forest fire potential- severity of annual maximum KBDI and frequency of high KBDI days. The present (2000~2019) and future KBDI(2021~2040, 2041~2060, 2081~2090) were calculated based on the meteorological observation and the ensemble regional climate model of the SSP1-2.6 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios with a spatial resolution of 1-km provided by Korea Meteorological Administration(KMA). Under the SSP5-8.5 scenario, 6.5℃ increase and 14% precipitation increase are expected at the end of the 21st century. The severity of maximum daily KBDI increases by 48% (+50mm), and the frequency of high KBDI days (> 100 KBDI) increases more than 100 days, which means the high potential for serious forest fires. The analysis results showed that Songnisan National Park has the highest potential for forest fire risk and will continue to be high in intensity and frequency in the future. It is expected that the forest vulnerability of the Baekdudaegan in the Chungcheong region will greatly increase and the difficulty in preventing and suppressing forest fires will increase as the abundance of combustible materials increases along with climate changes.

• Atmosphere
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.525-537
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• 2021

Black ices on road surfaces in winter tend to cause severe and terrible accidents. It is very difficult to detect black ice events in advance due to their localities as well as sensitivities to surface and upper meteorological variables. This study develops a methodology to detect the road sections vulnerable to black ice with the use of road surface temperature data obtained from a mobile road weather observation vehicle. The 7 experiments were conducted on the route from Nam-Wonju IC to Nam-Andong IC (132.5 km) on the Jungang Expressway during the period from December 2020 to February 2021. Firstly, temporal road surface temperature data were converted to the spatial data with a 50 m resolution. Then, the spatial road surface temperature was normalized with zero mean and one standard deviation using a simple normalization, a linear de-trend and normalization, and a low-pass filter and normalization. The resulting road thermal map was calculated in terms of road surface temperature differences. A road ice index was suggested using the normalized road temperatures and their horizontal differences. Road sections vulnerable to black ice were derived from road ice indices and verified with respect to road geometry and sky view, etc. It was found that black ice could occur not only over bridges, but also roads with a low sky view factor. These results are expected to be applicable to the alarm service for black ice to drivers.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.110-119
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• 2007

This study's objects are to predict distribution and to assess vulnerability of sub-alpine vegetations in the Korean peninsula for climate change using various climate models. This study validates relationship between sub-alpine vegetations and environmental factors using Pearson correlation analysis. Then, the future distribution of sub-alpine vegetations are predicted by a logistic regression. The major findings in this study are; First, spring mean temperature (March-May), total precipitation, elevation and warmth index are highly influencing factors to the distribution of sub-alpine vegetations. Second, the sub-alpine vegetations will be disappeared in South Korea and concentrated around Baekdu Mountain in North Korea. North Korea is predicted to have serious impact of climate change because temperature will be increased higher than in South Korea. The study findings concluded that the assessment of the future vulnerability of sub-alpine vegetations to climate change are significant.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.35-55
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• 2008

Assessing vulnerability to climate change is the first step to take when setting up appropriate adaptation strategies. Adaptive capacity to climate change is the important factor comprising vulnerability. An adaptive capacity index in agricultural water management system was developed considering agricultural water supply and demand for rice production in Jeolla-do, Korea. The agricultural water supply was assumed to be equal to the amount of water stored in the major agricultural reservoirs, while data on the agricultural water demand was obtained from the dynamic simulation results by Korea Agriculture Corporation(KAC). The spatial unit for analysis was conducted at the county(Si, Gun, Gu) level and temporal scale was based on every month from 1991-2003. Adaptive capacity for drought stress index(ACDS index) was calculated as the percentage of data points where the irrigated water supply was greater than the crop water demand. The ACDS index was compared with SWSCI(Standard Water Storage Capacity Index) and the relationship showed high degree of fit($R^2$=0.84) using the exponential function, indicating that the developed ACDS index is useful for evaluating the status of the balance between agricultural water supply and demand, especially for the small sized agricultural reservoirs. This study provided the methodological basis for developing climate change vulnerability index in agricultural water system which is projected to be more frequently exposed to drought condition in the future due to climate change. Further research should be extended to the study on the water demand of the crops other than rice and to the projection of the change in ACDS index in the future.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.15-28
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• 2010

Because deterioration of air quality and urban heat island directly harm health of citizens, Health Impact Assessment (HIA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for urban development projects needs to conduct analysis of their impacts objectively. This study aims to review appropriate methods for assessment of air quality used at each stage of urban development and to investigate prediction and assessment methods of urban heat island. In addition, by evaluating impacts of climate change following supposed urban construction performed in the central area of Korea on public health, it examines usefulness of HIA for urban construction. When urban heat island prediction and HIA method suggested in this study are applied to an imaginary city, they predict urban heat island properly and the impacts of climate changes on public health inside the city could be determined clearly by calculating life-climate index and bio-climate index related with thermal environment from the model.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.649-660
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• 2014

Spatial and temporal patterns of precipitation and temperature occur with regard to aspect and elevation of Mt. Halla in Jeju Island. Therefore, there is a need to predict regional drought associate with them to mitigate of impacts of drought. In this study, regional drought is predicted based on Palmer drought severity index (PDSI) and standardized precipitation index (SPI) using future (2015~2044) climate change scenario RCP (representative concentration pathways) 4.5 classified as 24 regions according to aspect and elevation. The results show that number and duration of drought will be decrease in Jeju Island. However, severity of severe drought will be increase in western and northern aspect with under 200 meters above mean sea level. These findings provide primary information for developing the proactive strategies to mitigate impacts of drought by future climate change in Jeju Island.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2021.06a
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• pp.69-69
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• 2021

From the unprecedented 2011 spring flood, the residens reside by Lake Champlain and Richelieu River encountered enormous damages. The International Joint Committee (IJC) released the Lake Champlain-Richelieu River (LCRR) Plan of Study (PoS). One of the major tasks for the PoS is to investigate the possible scenarios that might happen in the LCRR basin based on the stochastic simulation of the Net Basin Supplies that calculates the amount of flow into the lake and the river. Therefore, the current study proposed a novel apporach that simulate the annual NBS teleconnecting the climate index. The proposed model employed the bivariate empirical decomposition to contamporaneously model the long-term evolution of nonstationary oscillation embeded in the annual NBS and the climate signal (here, Artic Oscillation: AO). In order to represent the variational behavior of NBS correlation structure along with the temporal revolution of the climate index, a new nonstationary parameterization concept is proposed. The results indicate that the proposed model is superior performance in preserving long and short temporal correlation. It can even preserve the hurst coefficient better than any other tested models.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.351-356
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• 2016

The carbon capture and storage (CCS), which collects and stores carbon dioxide in a geological site, is a promising option to mitigate climate change. However, there is the possibility of carbon dioxide leakage from the soil in the steps of collecting, transporting, and storing. To ensure the feasibility of this technology, it is important to monitor the leakage of carbon dioxide and to assess the potential impacts. As plants are sensitive to the changes in carbon dioxide in the soil environment, we can utilize plant parameter to detect the carbon dioxide leakage. Currently, chlorophyll a content is a conventional index indicating the changes in plants, however, this method is labor intensive and it only utilizes a small portion of leaves. To overcome its limitations, a simple spectroscopic parameter, DGCI (dark green color index), was suggested as an easy and quick indicator. In this study, we compared the values of chlorophyll a contents with DGCI from the experiment investigating the impacts of high underground $CO_2$ on grape plants. Results suggest that DGCI had high correlation with chlorophyll a contents and it has high potential to be utilized as an easy indicator to monitor plants' responses to $CO_2$ treatment.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.145-151
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• 2016

Temperature variability at the upper layer related to climate regime shifts in the Korean waters was illustrated using water temperature, climate index. Three major climate regime shifts (CRS) in 1976, 1988 and 1998 in north Pacific region had an significant influence on the major marine ecosystems structure pattern. Three marginal seas around Korean peninsula; East Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea also got important impact from this kind of decadal shift. We used 10m sea water temperatures in four regions of Korean waters since 1950 to detect major fluctuation patterns both seasonally and also decadal shift. 1988 CRS was occurred in all of the study areas in most seasons however, 1998 CRS was only detected in the Yellow Sea and in the southern part of the East Sea. 1976 CRS was detected in all of the study area mainly in winter. After 1998 CRS, the water temperature in the southern part of the East Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea were going into decreased pattern; however, in the northern part of the East Sea, it was further shifted to increasing pattern which was started from 1988 CRS period.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.223-231
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• 2015

Although a considerable part of climate change can be explained by temperature change, hydrological change such as precipitation, evapotranspiration, and runoff impact more on society. For the ascertain a hydrological change in agriculture sector, this study estimate evapotranspiration of cropland in the Korean peninsula, and then to assess the drought severity in the past 30 years through the estimated potential evapotranspiration and observed precipitation. The potential evapotranspiration is estimated by EPIC model and Penman-Monteith method and the drought severity in cropland of the Korean peninsula is assessed using Normalized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (NPEI) based on the difference in precipitation and potential evapotranspiration. In North Korea, the estimated evapotranspiration tends to increase even though a significant change is not found due to the change of climate. Although a time series change in drought severity in the past 30 years is not pronounced, a deviation by year and difference between South and North Korea is certain. One reason of this is difference in precipitation and evapotranspiration change according to the latitude. The result including expansion of facilities for water management in North Korea can be used for agricultural decision making, as well as base data of climate change adaptation.