• The Korean Journal of Quaternary Research
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.55-61
• /
• 2003

In the year 2000 we culminated a successful five year investigation of climate change by completing a preliminary east-west transect across Mongolia. An earlier tree-ring study at Tarvagatay Pass, Mongolia indicated unusual warming during the 20th century similar to other paleo-investigations of the northern hemisphere. This record had represented one of the few tree-ring records for central Asia. New data from several sites in western Mongolia confirmed the preliminary temperature. The highest twenty-year growth period for the composite record is from 1973-1994. The western Mongolian record was significantly correlated with the Taimyr Peninsula and two northern hemisphere temperature reconstructions reflecting large-scale temperature patterns while showing some important regional differences. These differences should prove useful for climate models. We have also developed a millennial length temperature-sensitive record at the Solongotyin Davaa site (formerly Tarvagatay Pass) using relict wood and living trees. Conspicuous features over the last 1000 years are a century scale temperature decline punctuated by the end of the Little Ice Age in the late-1800s and 20th century warming. The record also shows a cold period early in the 12th century and warm intervals late in the 10th, early in the 15th and at end of the 18th centuries. Despite a limited sample size before 900 AD, the long Solongotyin Davaa record is useful in indicating severe cold events and suggests some cold intervals nearly as severe. These tree ring series, spanning much of the circumpolar northern treeline, have been compiled to create a long-term reconstruction of the Earth's temperature over centuries. The new chronology, in addition to its value as a detailed record of Mongolian climate, provides independent corroboration for such hemispheric and global reconstructions and their indications of unusual warming during the 20th century.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.357-371
• /
• 2016

Buildings in the city acts as a cause of distorted wind direction, wind speed, causing the stagnation of the air flow. In the recent trend of climate change can not but consider the temperature rise of the urbanization. This study was aimed to analyze the thermal comfort of planetary boundary layer in different artificial constructions areas which has a direct impact on urban climate, and estimating the warming phenomena. Envi-met model was used to consider the urban structure associated with urban growth in order to precisely determine the impact of the building on the city weather condition. The analyzed values of thermal comfort index were temperature, wind speed, horizontal and vertical turbulent diffusivity. In particular, analysis of the PPD(Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied) represents the human thermal comfort. In this study, by adjusting the arrangement and proportion of the top floor building in the urban it was found that the inflow of the fresh air and cooling can be derived low PPD. Vertical heat flux amount of the city caused by climate change was a factor to form a high potential temperature in the city and the accumulation of cold air does not appear near the surface. Based on this, to make the city effectively respond to climate change may require a long-term restructuring of urban spatial structure and density management.

• Proceedings of the Korean Environmental Sciences Society Conference
• /
• 2003.11a
• /
• pp.27-32
• /
• 2003

Atmospheric and oceanic numerical models are usually initial-value and/or boundary-value problems. Change in either initial or boundary conditions leads to a variation of model solutions. Much of the predictability research has been done on the response of model behavior to an initial value perturbation. Less effort has been made on the response of model behavior to a boundary value perturbation. In this study, we use the latest version of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Climate Model (CCM3) to study the model uncertainty to tiny SST errors. The results show the urgency to investigate the second kind predictability problem for the climate models.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
• /
• 2020.11a
• /
• pp.165-166
• /
• 2020

The climate on the Korean Peninsula has been warmed recently, abnormal weather conditions such as heat waves, cold waves, and tropical nights have been detected frequently. Precisely, the number of days with cold waves in the winter has increased, and rapid changes of temperature in the morning and afternoon have occurred frequently in the 2000s. Due to the previous phenomenons, this research is focused on evaluating the concrete's Chloride Penetration Resistance and Durability, and the difference of the resistance according to the W/C.

• Wind and Structures
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.37-55
• /
• 2010

In this paper South Africa is divided into strong wind climate zones, which indicate the main sources of annual maximum wind gusts. By the analysis of wind gust data of 94 weather stations, which had continuous climate time series of 10 years or longer, six sources, or strong-wind producing mechanisms, could be identified and zoned accordingly. The two primary causes of strong wind gusts are thunderstorm activity and extratropical low pressure systems, which are associated with the passage of cold fronts over the southern African subcontinent. Over the eastern and central interior of South Africa annual maximum wind gusts are usually caused by thunderstorm gust fronts during summer, while in the western and southern interior extratropical cyclones play the most dominant role. Along the coast and adjacent interior annual extreme gusts are usually caused by extratropical cyclones. Four secondary sources of strong winds are the ridging of the quasi-stationary Atlantic and Indian Ocean high pressure systems over the subcontinent, surface troughs to the west in the interior with strong ridging from the east, convergence from the interior towards isolated low pressure systems or deep coastal low pressure systems, and deep surface troughs on the West Coast.

• Atmosphere
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.55-68
• /
• 2007

Future climate changes over East Asia are projected by anthropogenic forcing of greenhouse gases and aerosols using ECHO-G/S (ECHAM4/HOPE-G). Climate simulation in the 21st century is conducted with three standard SRES scenarios (A1B, B1, and A2) and the model performance is assessed by the 20th Century (20C3M) experiment. From the present climate simulation (20C3M), the model reproduced reliable climate state in the most fields, however, cold bias in temperature and dry bias of summer in precipitation occurred. The intercomparison among models using Taylor diagram indicates that ECHO-G/S exhibits smaller mean bias and higher pattern correlation than other nine AOGCMs. Based on SRES scenarios, East Asia will experience warmer and wetter climate in the coming 21st century. Changes of geographical patterns from the present to the future are considerably similar through all the scenarios except for the magnitude difference. The temperature in winter and precipitation in summer show remarkable increase. In spite of the large uncertainty in simulating precipitation by regional scale, we found that the summer (winter) precipitation at eastern coast (north of $40^{\circ}N$) of East Asia has significantly increased. In the 21st century, the warming over the continents of East Asia showed much more increase than that over the ocean. Hence, more enhanced (weakened) land-sea thermal contrast over East Asia in summer (winter) will cause strong (weak) monsoon. In summer, the low pressure located in East Asia becomes deeper and the moisture from the south or southeast is transported more into the land. These result in increasing precipitation amount over East Asia, especially at the coastal region. In winter, the increase (decrease) of precipitation is accompanied by strengthening (weakening) of baroclinicity over the land (sea) of East Asia.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.35 no.5
• /
• pp.350-355
• /
• 2013

Little information is available for emission pathway even if HFC-134a that is known as one of the major greenhouse gases has been broadly used in Korea. This paper attempts to clarify the emission characteristics of HFC-134a used for refrigerant of cold drinking vending machines (CDVMs) at the use- and disposal-phase. We measured the residual amounts in the scrap CDVMs of 47 by applying commercial recover for refrigerant. The first-order kinetic model was introduced and the emission rate would be proportional to the remaining quantity of refrigerant. The emission factor at the use-phase was determined indirectly to be $6.9{\pm}0.7$ %/yr within a confidence interval of 95%, using information on residual amount and elapsed operation time at the disposal point. Correspondingly, the annual emission rate of HFC-134a per CDVM was determined to be 11.6 g. The average residual rate of HFC-134a in scrap CDVMs was assessed to be $62.5{\pm}2.2%$, leading to a potential emission amount of 144.8 g per scrap CDVM. The chemical compositions of refrigerants from scrap passenger vehicles are quite similar to those of new refrigerants, suggesting that the refrigerants from scrap passenger vehicles could be reused. During the recovering process of refrigerant, the recovered refrigerant was contaminated by compressor lubricant that accounted for about 30% in weight. It is necessary to separate the refrigerant from the recovered material contaminated by lubricant for recycling and reuse the refrigerant.

• Atmosphere
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.261-271
• /
• 2010

Carbon isotopic compositions of the YC-2 stalagmite in Yongcheon Cave were analyzed to delineate paleoclimatic variations near Korean peninsula for the past historical period. The YC-2 stalagmite is about 68 mm long and annual growth laminae are distinctively identified. Because the number of growth laminae is at least 242, the stalagmite can be estimated to be at least 241 years old. At about 15 mm from the bottom, one thick brown growth lamina is observed, and this lamina was likely to have been formed when the stalagmite ceased to grow, making the hiatus. High resolution, carbon isotope data indicate past fluctuations of East Asia monsoonal intensity (intimately related to the amount of precipitation). Based on the carbon isotope trend, the stalagmite can be divided into three stages (Stages I, II and III). The highest carbon isotopic compositions of Stage I (${\delta}^{13}C$=-3.3~0.4‰, PDB) indicate that the stalagmite grew during the Little Ice Age when cold and dry climate prevailed with less vegetation. Stage II is characterized by a transitional period from cold and dry to warm and wet climate with a increasing trend of carbon isotopic compositions (${\delta}^{13}C$=-9.6~-0.6‰) and this period indicates the weakening of the Little Ice Age climate. This decreasing trend also suggests that Little Ice Age was terminated near middle 1870's around Korean peninsula. Relatively low carbon isotopic compositions during Stage III (${\delta}^{13}C$=-11.0~-8.0‰) indicates that the climate was changed to warm and wet conditions which are similar to the present.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
• /
• v.45 no.6
• /
• pp.622-629
• /
• 2019

Objectives: The occurrence of norovirus food poisoning in South Korea has been reported since 2003. This study was performed to investigate the characteristics of norovirus food poisoning outbreaks in Korea from 2006 to 2015 and to analyze the relationship between these outbreaks and climate factors. Methods: Data on norovirus food poisoning outbreaks were obtained from the Korea Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. Data on climate factors were obtained from the Korea Meteorological Administration. Frequency analysis and Pearson's correlation analysis were adopted for this study. Results: During the study period, norovirus was the greatest contributing factor of food poisoning outbreaks. Approximately half of the outbreaks of norovirus food poisoning occurred in winter. Average temperature, highest and lowest temperatures, precipitation, number of days with rainfall, and humidity all had a significant negative correlation with monthly number of outbreaks of norovirus food poisoning (p<0.05). Among these, the lowest and average temperature showed higher correlation coefficients. However, the sum of the outbreaks in spring and autumn was similar to that of winter, and more than one-third occurred in group meal-service settings, including school lunches. This was strongly assumed as the use of norovirus-contaminated groundwater for preparation of meals in some settings. Conclusion: The cold and dry of the winter season in Korea may assist the transmission of norovirus. Also, the use of groundwater in group meal service is suspected of inducing a larger scale of norovirus food poisoning. Both health authorities and community-based prevention and control measures are required to respond to these complex etiological outbreaks.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
• /
• v.46 no.3
• /
• pp.253-265
• /
• 2013

The objective of this study is to analyse the current climate zone applied by K$\ddot{o}$ppen climate classification and the future climate zone projected by the A2 scenario in Asia regions. The spatial and temporal variations of precipitation and temperature were also analyzed. As regards to the result of analysis on the variation of climate factor, temperature and precipitation will be increasing $4.0^{\circ}C$ and 12% respectively in the 2080s comparing with the reference period (1991~2010). Spatially, the range of temperature increase on the high latitude area is higher than that on the low latitude area. The precipitation will be increasing averagely in the overall area, but the spatial unequal distribution of precipitation will be intensified. At the result of the future climate zone, the area of warm climates will be increasing while the area of cold climates will be decreasing. In 2080s, the temperature will be increasing as much as 7.2% and 1.9% on the Tropical climates and Arid climates respectively, but it will be decreasing as -2.4%, -4.9% and -1.8% on the Warm temperate climates, Cold climates and Polar climates respectively. Furthermore, the part of Savannah climates and Desert climates will be mostly increasing. It is mainly caused by the temperature increase and desertification impact according to global warming.