• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.49 no.10
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• pp.823-833
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• 2016

This study developed a trivariate Copula function based drought frequency analysis model to better evaluate the recent 2014~2015 drought event. The bivariate frequency analysis has been routinely used for the drought variables of interest (e.g. drought duration and severity). However, the recent drought patterns showed that the intensity can be regarded as an important factor which is being characterized by short duration and severe intensity. Thus, we used the trivariate Copula function approach to incorporate the trivariate drought characteristics into the drought frequency analysis. It was found that the return periods based on the trivariate frequency analysis are, in general, higher than the existing bivariate frequency analysis. In addition, this study concludes that the increase in drought frequency claimed by the Gumbel copula function has been overestimated compared to the Student t Copula function. In other words, the selection of copula functions is rather sensitive to the estimation of trivariate drought return periods at a given duration, magnitude and intensity.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.62 no.2
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• pp.63-73
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• 2020

Drought is considered as a devastating hazard that causes serious agricultural, ecological and socio-economic impacts worldwide. Fundamentally, the drought can be defined as temporarily different levels of inadequate precipitation, soil moisture, and water supply relative to the long-term average conditions. From no unified definition of droughts, droughts have been divided into different severity level, i.e., moderate drought, severe drought, extreme drought and exceptional drought. The drought severity classification defined the ranges for each indicator for each dryness level. Because the ranges of the various indicators often don't coincide, the final drought category tends to be based on what the majority of the indicators show and on local observations. Evaporative Stress Index (ESI), a satellite-based drought index using the ratio of potential and actual evaporation, is being used as a index of the droughts occurring rapidly in a short period of time from studies showing a more sensitive and fast response to drought compared to Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), and Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). However, ESI is difficult to provide an objective drought assessment because it does not have clear drought severity classification criteria. In this study, U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM), the standard for drought determination used in the United States, was applied to ESI, and the Percentile method was used to classify drought categories by severity. Regarding the actual 2017 drought event in South Korea, we compare the spatial distribution of drought area and understand the USDM-based ESI by comparing the results of Standardized Groundwater level Index (SGI) and drought impact information. These results demonstrated that the USDM-based ESI could be an effective tool to provide objective drought conditions to inform management decisions for drought policy.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.6B
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• pp.561-569
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• 2010

In this study, the impact of climate change on extreme drought events is investigated by comparing drought severity-area-duration curves under present and future climate. The depth-area-duration analysis for characterizing an extreme precipitation event provides a basis for analysing drought events when storm depth is replaced by an appropriate measure of drought severity. In our climate-change impact experiments, the future monthly precipitation time series is based on a KMA regional climate model which has a $27km{\times}27km$ spatial resolution, and the drought severity is computed using the standardized precipitation index. As a result, agricultural drought risk is likely to increase especially in short duration, while hydrologic drought risk will greatly increase in all durations. Such results indicate that a climate change vulnerability assessment for present water resources supply system is urgent.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.637-647
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• 2014

Quantitative assessment of groundwater level change under extreme event is important since groundwater system is directly affected by drought. Substantially, groundwater level fluctuation reveals to be delayed from several hours to few months after raining according to the aquifer characteristics. Groundwater system in Jeju Island would be also affected by drought and almost all regions were suffered from a severe drought during summer season (July to September) in 2013. To estimate the effect of precipitation to groundwater system, monthly mean groundwater levels in 2013 compared to those in the past from 48 monitoring wells belong to be largely affected by rainfall(Dr) over Jeju Island were analyzed. Mean groundwater levels during summer season recorded 100 mm lowered of precipitation compared to the past 30 years became decreased to range from 2.63 m to 5.42 m in southern region compared to the past and continued to December. These decreasing trends are also found in western(from -1.21 m to -4.06 m), eastern(-0.91 m to -3.24 m), and northern region(from 0.58 m to -4.02 m), respectively. Moreover, the response of groundwater level from drought turned out to be -3.80 m in August after delaying about one month. Therefore, severe drought in 2013 played an important role on groundwater system in Jeju Island and the effect of drought for groundwater level fluctuation was higher in southern region than other ones according to the regional difference of precipitation decrease.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.39 no.4 s.165
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• pp.373-382
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• 2006

In this study a theoretical drought severity-duration-frequency analysis is performed based on a simple Rectangular Pulses Poisson Process Model(RPPM). Data set with various durations are prepared for a given truncation level, whose statistics are then derived to be used for parameter estimation. These parameters are then used for the theoretical drought severity-duration-frequency analysis. The analysis is considered for two cases; one is to consider the overlap probability and the other is not. The drought severity of considering the overlap probability increases more as the return period increases. However, the overlap probability itself decreases as the duration increases, which is because the occurrence probability of events decreases as the duration increases. Also, if the duration increases, the events rarely or even not occur, since parameters of the model cannot be estimated in those cases, so the drought severity may not be computed. This is an obvious limitation of the simple RPPM. In this study the return periods of the important drought events occurred in Seoul are estimated using the results of the study. If the return period of an event is assumed to be the longest one among those with various durations, the return periods of some important event in Seoul are estimated to be between 14 and 35 years. These return periods are not so long to indicate that these droughts can occur frequently.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.387-393
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• 2018

Considering the effect of climate change, a quantitative analysis of extreme drought is needed to reduce the damage from extreme droughts. Therefore, in this study, a quantitative risk analysis of extreme drought was conducted. The threshold level method was applied to define a drought event using Cheugugi rainfall data in past, gauged rainfall data in present, and climate change scenario rainfall data in future. A bivariate drought frequency analysis was performed using the copula function to simultaneously consider two major drought characteristics such as duration and severity. Based on the bivariate drought frequency curves, the risks for the past, present and future were calculated and the risks for future extreme drought were analyzed comparing with the past and present. As a result, the mean drought duration of the future was shorter than that of past and present, however, the mean drought severity was much larger. Therefore short term and severe droughts were expected to occur in the future. In addition, the analysis of the maximum drought risk indicated that the future maximum drought risk was 1.39~1.94 times and 1.33~1.81 times higher than the past and present. Finally, the risk of extreme drought over past and present maximum drought in the future was very high, ranging from 0.989 to 1.0, and the occurrence probability of extreme drought was high in the future.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.51 no.10
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• pp.875-886
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• 2018

This study evaluated drought severity by bivariate frequency analysis using drought magnitude and precipitation deficit. A drought event was defined by Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the precipitation deficit was estimated using reference precipitation corresponding to the SPI -1. In previous studies, drought magnitude and duration were used for bivariate frequency analysis. However, since these two variables have a largely linear relationship, extensibility of drought information is not great compared to the univariate frequency analysis for each variable. In the case of drought in 2015, return periods of 'drought magnitude-precipitation deficit' in the Seoul, Yangpyeong, and Chungju indicated severe drought over 300 years. However, the result of 'drought magnitude-duration' showed a significant difference by evaluating the return period of about 10, 50, and 50 years. Although a drought including the rainy season was seriously lacking in precipitation, drought magnitude did not adequately represent the severity of the absolute lack of precipitation. This showed that there is a limit to expressing the actual severity of drought. The results of frequency analysis for 'drought magnitude-precipitation deficit' include the absolute deficit of precipitation information, so which could consider being a useful indicator to cope with drought.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.243-251
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• 2010

Evapotranspiration and rainfall-runoff are the major components of hydrological cycle and thereby the changes of them can directly affect the wetness/dryness or runoff characteristics of basins. In this study the wetness/dryness in Geum river basin are classified by dint of cumulative probability density function of monthly moisture index and the long term changes of them are analyzed based on climatic water balance concept. The drought events in Geum river basin are selected through evaluation of monthly moisture index and the various hydrological properties of them are investigated in detail. Also the trends of time-series of climatic water balance components are examined by Seasonal Kendall test and the variability of hydrological cycle in Geum river basin during the recent decade is inquired. It is judged that the results of this study can be contributed to establishment of the counter plan against the future drought events as the fundamental information.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.1640-1644
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• 2010

In this study the wetness/dryness in Geum river basin are classified by dint of cumulative probability density function of monthly moisture index and the long term changes of them are analyzed based on climatic water balance concept. The drought events in Geum river basin are selected through evaluation of monthly moisture index and the various hydrological properties of them are investigated in detail. Also the trends of time-series of climatic water balance components are examined by Seasonal Kendall test and the variability of hydrological cycle in Geum river basin during the recent decade is inquired. It is judged that the results of this study can be contributed to establishment of the counter plan against the future drought events as the fundamental information.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.1851-1860
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• 2013

The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is widely applied to evaluate for meteorological droughts. However, the SPI is limited to capture a drought event with a short duration, expecially shorter than one month. In this study, we proposed a daily SPI (DSPI) as a way to overcome the limitation of the monthly SPI for drought monitoring. In order to objectively assess the ability of the drought reproduction of the DSPI, we performed a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis using the quantified drought records from official reports, newspapers, etc. The results of ROC analysis showed that the DSPI has an ability to reproduce short-term drought compared with other indices. It also showed that the main cause of historical droughts was the shortage of rainfall accumulated during the time period less than 90 days compared with the rainfall of normal years.