• Atmosphere
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.24-43
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• 2004

This paper describes the detailed characteristics of heavy rainfall events occurred in Chungcheong province on 15 and 16 April and from 6 to 8 August 2002 based on the analysis of raingauge rainfall rate and radar reflectivity from the METRI's X-band Weather Radar located in Cheongju. A synoptic analysis of the case is carried out, first, and then the analysis is devoted to seeing how the radar observes the case and how much information we obtain. The highly resolved radar reflectivity of horizontal and vertical resolutions of 1 km and 500 m, respectively shows a three-dimensional structure of the precipitating system, in a similar sequence with the ground rainfall rate. The radar echo classification algorithm for convective/stratiform cloud is applied. In the convectively-classified area, the radar reflectivity pattern shows a fair agreement with that of the surface rainfall rate. This kind of classification using radar reflectivity is considered to be useful for the precipitation forecasting. Another noteworthy aspect of the case includes the effect of topography on the precipitating system, following the analysis of the surface rainfall rate, topography, and precipitating system. The results from this case study offer a unique opportunity of the usefulness of weather radar for better understanding of structural and variable characteristics of flash flood-producing heavy rainfall events, in particular for their improved forecasting.

• Atmosphere
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.257-271
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• 2011

The aim of this study is to examine weather modification by urbanization and human activities. The characteristics of the urban heat island (UHI) and precipitation in Seoul metropolitan area of Korea are investigated to demonstrate that cities can change or modify local and nearby weather and climate, and to confirm that cities can initiate convection, change the behavior of convective precipitation, and enhance downstream precipitation. The data used in this study are surface meteorological station data observed in Seoul and its nearby 5 cities for the period of 1960 to 2009, and 162 Automatic Weather System stations data observed in the Seoul metropolitan area from 1998 to 2009. Air temperature and precipitation amount tend to increase with time, and relative humidity decreases because of urbanization. Similar to previous studies for other cities, the average maximum UHI is weakest in summer and is strong in autumn and winter, and the maximum UHI intensity is more frequently observed in the nighttime than in the daytime, decreases with increasing wind speed, and is enhanced for clear skies. Relatively warm regions extend in the east-west direction and relatively cold regions are located near the northern and southern mountains inside Seoul. The satellite cities in the outskirts of Seoul have been rapidly built up in recent years, thus exhibiting increases in near-surface air temperature. The yearly precipitation amount during the last 50 years is increased with time but rainy days are decreased. The heavy rainfall events of more than $20mm\;hr^{-1}$ increases with time. The substantial changes observed in precipitation in Seoul seem to be linked with the accelerated increase in the urban sprawl in recent decades which in turn has induced an intensification of the UHI effect and enhanced downstream precipitation. We also found that the frequency of intense rain showers has increased in Seoul metropolitan area.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.55-64
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• 2000

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission(TRMM) Satellite was launched in November 1997, carving into orbit the first space-borne Precipitation Radar(PR). The main objective of the TRMM is to obtain and study multi-year science data sets of tropical and subtropical rainfall measurements. In the present investigation, the characteristics of heavy rainfall cases over Korea in 1998 and 1999 are analyzed using the TRMM/PR dat3. We compare the rainrate measured from TRMM/PR with the accumulated rainfall data for 10 minutes tv Automatic Weather System(AWS). Especially, horizontal cross-section of rainrate with height and longitude in the precipitating clouds are investigated. As a result of the comparison with GMS-5 IR1, the TRMM/PR data delineate well the rain type( i.e. convective, stratiform cloud and others), height of storm top and instantaneous rainrate in the precipitating clouds. The vertical structure with height and horizontal cross-section of rainrate along the longitude show the orographic effect on the rainfall. TRMM/PR instrument measures the rainrate below 6 ㎜/hr more than AWS rainguages and inclined to underestimate the rainrate than rainguages for the whole area.

• Atmosphere
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.343-364
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• 2014

This study presents local and synoptic conditions associated with extreme heavy snowfall events in the Yeongdong region, as well as the temporal and spatial variability of these conditions. During the last 12 years (2001~2012), 3 extreme snowfall events occurred in the Yeongdong region, which recorded daily snowfall greater than 50 cm, respectively. In these events, one of the noticeable features is the occurrence of heavy hourly snowfall greater than 10 cm. It was reported from satellite analysis that these heavy snowfall may be closely related to mesoscale convective clouds. In this paper the 3 extreme events are examined on their synoptic environments associated with the developments of mesoscale convective system using numerical model output. These 3 events all occurred in strongly forced synoptic environments where 500 and 300 hPa troughs and 500 hPa thermal troughs were evident. From the analysis of diagnostic variables, it was found in all 3 events that absolute vorticity and cold air advection were dominant in the Yeongdong region and its surrounding sea at upper levels, especially at around 500 hPa (absolute vorticity: $20{\sim}60{\times}10^{-5}s^{-1}$, cold air advection: $-10{\sim}-20^{\circ}C$ $12hr^{-1}$). Moreover, the spatial distributions of cold advection showed mostly the shape of a narrow band along the eastern coast of Korea. These features of absolute vorticity and cold advection at 500 hPa were sustained for about 10 hours before the occurrence of maximum hourly snowfall.

• Atmosphere
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.69-86
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• 2007

The characteristics of the dual-Doppler wind retrieval method based on a three dimensional variational (3DVAR) conception were investigated from the following four points of view; the sensitivity of the number of iteration, the effect of the weak constraint term, the effect of the smoothness term, and the sensitivity of the error mixing ratio of the radial velocities. In the experiment, the radial velocities relative to the Gosan and Jindo radar sites of the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) were calculated from the forecasting of the WRF (Weather Research and Forecast; Skamarock, 2004) model at 1330 UTC 30 June 2006, which is the one and half hour forecast from the initial time, 1200 UTC on that day. The results showed that the retrieval performance of the horizontal wind field was robust, but that of the vertical wind was sensitive to the external conditions, such as iteration number and the on/off of the weak constraint term. The sensitivity of error mixing ratio was so large that even the horizontal wind retrieval efficiency was reduced a lot. But the sensitivity of the smooth term was not so large. When we applied this method to the real mesoscale convective system (MCS) between the Gosan and Jindo radar pair at 1430 UTC 30 June 2006, the wind structure of the convective cells in the MCS was consistently retrieved relative to the reflectivity factor structure. By comparing the vertical wind structure of this case with that of 10 minutes after, 1440 UTC 30 June 2006, we got the physical consistency of our method.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.41-53
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• 2014

The special observation using Radiosonde was performed to investigate precipitation events over the east coast of Korea during the winter season from 5 January to 29 February 2012. This analysis focused on the various indices to describe the characteristics of the atmospheric instability. Equivalent Potential Temperature (EPT) from surface (1000 hPa) to middle level (near 750 hPa) was increased when the precipitation occurred and these levels (1000~750 hPa) had moisture enough to cause the instability of atmosphere. The temporal evolution of Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) appeared to be enhanced when the precipitation fell. Similar behavior was also observed for the temporal evolution of Storm Relative Helicity (SRH), indicating that it had a higher value during the precipitation events. To understand a detailed structure of atmospheric condition for the formation of precipitation, the surface remote sensing data and Automatic Weather System (AWS) data were analyzed. We calculated the Total Precipitable Water FLUX (TPWFLUX) using TPW and wind vector. TPWFLUX and precipitation amount showed a statistically significant relationship in the north easterly winds. The result suggested that understanding of the dynamical processes such as wind direction be important to comprehend precipitation phenomenon in the east coast of Korea.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.1187-1201
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• 2010

The formation and development conditions of the cloud streets over the yellow sea by the Cold Surge of Siberian Anticyclone Expansion which produce the heavy snowfall events over the southwestern coast, Honam District of the Korean peninsula, has been investigated through analyses of the three dimensional snow cloud structures by using the CAPPI, RHI, VAD and VVP data of X-band Radar at Muan Weather Observatory and S-band Radar at Jindo Weather Station. The data to be used are obtained from January 04, 2003, when heavy snow storm hits on Gwangju and Honam District. The PPI Radar images show that the cloud bands distribute in perpendicular to the expansion direction of the high pressure and that the radius of cloud cells is about 5~8 km with 20~30 dBz and distance between each cell is about 10 km. And but the vertical Radar images show that the cloud street is a small scale convective type cloud within height of about 3 km where a stable layer exists. From the VVP images, the time period of the high pressure expansion, the moving direction and development stages of the system are delineated. Finally, the vertical distribution of wind direction is fairly constants, while the wind speed sheer increases with altitude to 3 km.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.712-736
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• 2022

To understand the characteristics of low-level clouds (CLs), environmental variables are composited on each CL using individual surface observations and six-hourly upper-air meteorologies around the globe. Individual CLs has its own distinct environmental conditions. Over the eastern subtropical and western North Pacific Ocean in JJA, stratocumulus (CL5) has a colder sea surface temperature (SST), stronger and lower inversion, and more low-level cloud amount (LCA) than the climatology whereas cumulus (CL12) has the opposite characteristics. Over the eastern subtropical Pacific, CL5 and CL12 are influenced by cold and warm advection within the PBL, respectively but have similar cold advection over the western North Pacific. This indicates that the fundamental physical process distinguishing CL5 and CL12 is not the horizontal temperature advection but the interaction with the underlying sea surface, i.e., the deepening-decoupling of PBL and the positive feedback between shortwave radiation and SST. Over the western North Pacific during JJA, sky-obscuring fog (CL11), no low-level cloud (CL0), and fair weather stratus (CL6) are associated with anomalous warm advection, surface-based inversion, mean upward flow, and moist mid-troposphere with the strongest anomalies for CL11 followed by CL0. Over the western North Pacific during DJF, bad weather stratus (CL7) occurs in the warm front of the extratropical cyclone with anomalous upward flow while cumulonimbus (CL39) occurs on the rear side of the cold front with anomalous downward flow. Over the tropical oceans, CL7 has strong positive (negative) anomalies of temperature in the upper troposphere (PBL), relative humidity, and surface wind speed in association with the mesoscale convective system while CL12 has the opposite anomalies and CL39 is in between.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.37 no.7
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• pp.420-433
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to improve the calibration matrixes of 2-D and 3-D convective rainfall rates (CRR) using the brightness temperature of the infrared $10.8{\mu}m$ channel (IR), the difference of brightness temperatures between infrared $10.8{\mu}m$ and vapor $6.7{\mu}m$ channels (IR-WV), and the normalized reflectance of the visible channel (VIS) from the COMS satellite and rainfall rate from the weather radar for the period of 75 rainy days from April 22, 2011 to October 22, 2011 in Korea. Especially, the rainfall rate data of the weather radar are used to validate the new 2-D and 3-DCRR calibration matrixes suitable for the Korean peninsula for the period of 24 rainy days in 2011. The 2D and 3D calibration matrixes provide the basic and maximum CRR values ($mm\;h^{-1}$) by multiplying the rain probability matrix, which is calculated by using the number of rainy and no-rainy pixels with associated 2-D (IR, IR-WV) and 3-D (IR, IR-WV, VIS) matrixes, by the mean and maximum rainfall rate matrixes, respectively, which is calculated by dividing the accumulated rainfall rate by the number of rainy pixels and by the product of the maximum rain rate for the calibration period by the number of rain occurrences. Finally, new 2-D and 3-D CRR calibration matrixes are obtained experimentally from the regression analysis of both basic and maximum rainfall rate matrixes. As a result, an area of rainfall rate more than 10 mm/h is magnified in the new ones as well as CRR is shown in lower class ranges in matrixes between IR brightness temperature and IR-WV brightness temperature difference than the existing ones. Accuracy and categorical statistics are computed for the data of CRR events occurred during the given period. The mean error (ME), mean absolute error (MAE), and root mean squire error (RMSE) in new 2-D and 3-D CRR calibrations led to smaller than in the existing ones, where false alarm ratio had decreased, probability of detection had increased a bit, and critical success index scores had improved. To take into account the strong rainfall rate in the weather events such as thunderstorms and typhoon, a moisture correction factor is corrected. This factor is defined as the product of the total precipitable waterby the relative humidity (PW RH), a mean value between surface and 500 hPa level, obtained from a numerical model or the COMS retrieval data. In this study, when the IR cloud top brightness temperature is lower than 210 K and the relative humidity is greater than 40%, the moisture correction factor is empirically scaled from 1.0 to 2.0 basing on PW RH values. Consequently, in applying to this factor in new 2D and 2D CRR calibrations, the ME, MAE, and RMSE are smaller than the new ones.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 1999.11a
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• pp.103-106
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• 1999

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission(TRMM) is a United States-Japan project for rain measurement from space. The first spaceborne Precipitation Radar(PR) has been installed aboard the TRMM satellite. The ground based validation of the TRMM satellite observations was conducted by TRMM science team through a Global Validation Program(GVP) consisted of 10 or more ground validation sites throughout the tropics. However, TRMM radar should always be validated and assessed against reference data to be used in Korean Peninsula because the rainrates measured with satellite varies by time and space. We have analyzed errors in the comparison of rainrates measured with the TRMM/PR and the ground-based instrument i.e. Automatic Weather System(AWS) by means of statistical methods. Preliminary results show that the near surface rainrate of TRMM/PR are highly correlated with ground measurements especially for the very deep convective rain clouds, though the correlation is changed according to the type and amount of precipitating clouds. Results also show that TRMM/PR instrument is inclined to underestimate the rainrate on the whole over Korea than the AWS measurement for the cases of heavy rainfall.