• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.209-221
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• 2018

The characteristics of heat wave events in Seoul are analyzed using weather station data from Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) ERA-Interim reanalysis data from 1979 to 2016. Heat waves are defined as events in the upper 10th percentile of the daily maximum temperatures. The associated synoptic weather patterns are then classified into six clusters through Self-Organizing Map (SOM) analysis for sea-level pressure anomalies in East Asia. Cluster 1 shows an anti-cyclonic circulation and weak troughs in southeast and west of Korea, respectively. This synoptic pattern leads to southeasterly winds that advect warm and moist air to the Korean Peninsula. Both clusters 2 and 3 are associated with southerly winds formed by an anti-cyclonic circulation over the east of Korea and cyclonic circulation over the west of Korea. Cluster 4 shows a stagnant weather pattern with weak winds and strong insolation. Clusters 5 and 6 are associated with F?hn wind resulting from an anti-cyclonic circulation in the north of the Korean Peninsula. In terms of long-term variations, event frequencies of clusters 4 and 5 show increasing and decreasing trends, respectively. However, other clusters do not show any long-term trends, indicating that the mechanisms that drive heat wave events in Seoul have remained constant over the last four decades.

• Atmosphere
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.403-414
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• 2018

Predictability of Northern Hemisphere blocking in the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) Global Data Assimilation and Prediction System (GDAPS) is evaluated for the period of July 2016 to May 2017. Using the operational model output, blocking is defined by a meridional gradient reversal of 500-hPa geopotential height as Tibaldi-Molteni Index. Its predictability is quantified by computing the critical success index and bias score against ERA-Interim data. It turns out that Northwest Pacific blockings, among others, are reasonably well predicted with a forecast lead time of 2~3 days. The highest prediction skill is found in spring with 3.5 lead days, whereas the lowest prediction skill is observed in autumn with 2.25 lead days. Although further analyses are needed with longer dataset, this result suggests that Northern Hemisphere blocking is not well predicted in the operational weather prediction model beyond a short-term weather prediction limit. In the spring, summer, and autumn periods, there was a tendency to overestimate the Western North Pacific blocking.

• Atmosphere
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.295-309
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• 2019

Due to frequent occurrence of abnormal weather, the need to improve the accuracy of subseasonal prediction has increased. Here we analyze the performance of weekly predictions out to 6 weeks by GloSea5 climate model. The performance in circulation field from January 1991 to December 2010 is first analyzed at each grid point using the 500-hPa geopotential height. The anomaly correlation coefficient and mean-square skill score, calculated each week against the ECWMF ERA-Interim reanalysis data, illustrate better prediction skills regionally in the tropics and over the ocean and seasonally during winter. Secondly, we evaluate the predictability of 7 major teleconnection patterns in the Northern Hemisphere: North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), East Atlantic (EA), East Atlantic/Western Russia (EAWR), Scandinavia (SCAND), Polar/Eurasia (PE), West Pacific (WP), Pacific-North American (PNA). Skillful predictability of the patterns turns out to be approximately 1~2 weeks. During summer, the EAWR and SCAND, which exhibit a wave pattern propagating over Eurasia, show a considerably lower skill than the other 5 patterns, while in winter, the WP and PNA, occurring in the Pacific region, maintain the skill up to 2 weeks. To account for the model's bias in reproducing the teleconnection patterns, we measure the similarity between the teleconnection patterns obtained in each lead time. In January, the model's teleconnection pattern remains similar until lead time 3, while a sharp decrease of similarity can be seen from lead time 2 in July.

• Atmosphere
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.45-60
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• 2021

The synoptic structures and precipitation impact of extratropical cyclones (ETCs) influencing on the three adjacent megacities in East Asia, i.e., Beijing (Beijing ETCs), Seoul (Seoul ETCs) and Tokyo (Tokyo ETCs), are analyzed using ERA-interim reanalysis data from 1979 to 2018. Individual ETC tracks are identified with the automated tracking algorithm applied to 850-hPa relative vorticity field. Among four seasons, ETCs are the most frequent in spring. In this season, Beijing ETCs are mainly generated at the leeside of Altai-Sayan Mountains and primarily develop through interaction between the upper-level trough and lower-level cyclonic circulation. For Seoul ETCs, the leesides of Altai-Sayan Mountains (Seoul-N ETCs) and Tibetan Plateau (Seoul-S ETCs) are main genesis regions and the features of ETCs are different according to the genesis regions. While Seoul-N ETCs mainly develope by the same mechanism of Beijing ETCs, strong diabatic heating due to vapor transport is responsible for the genesis of Seoul-S ETCs. Tokyo ETCs are originated from the leesides of Tibetan Plateau and Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension regions, and strong diabatic heating as well as interaction between upper and lower levels determines the genesis of these ETCs. The precipitation impact resulting from ETCs become strong in the order of Beijing ETCs, Seoul-N ETCs, Seoul-S ETCs, and Tokyo ETCs and accounts for up to 40%, 27%, 52%, and 70% of regional precipitation, respectively.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.5_1
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• pp.763-774
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• 2020

Wind data forecasted from the numerical weather prediction (NWP) model is generally used as the first-guess of the target tracking process to obtain the atmospheric motion vectors(AMVs) because it increases tracking accuracy and reduce computational time. However, there is a contradiction that the NWP model used as the first-guess is used again as the reference in the AMVs verification process. To overcome this problem, model-independent first guesses are required. In this study, we propose the AMVs derivation from Lucas and Kanade optical flow method and then using it as the first guess. To retrieve AMVs, Himawari-8/AHI geostationary satellite level-1B data were used at 00, 06, 12, and 18 UTC from August 19 to September 5, 2015. To evaluate the impact of applying the optical flow method on the AMV derivation, cross-validation has been conducted in three ways as follows. (1) Without the first-guess, (2) NWP (KMA/UM) forecasted wind as the first-guess, and (3) Optical flow method based wind as the first-guess. As the results of verification using ECMWF ERA-Interim reanalysis data, the highest precision (RMSVD: 5.296-5.804 ms^-1) was obtained using optical flow based winds as the first-guess. In addition, the computation speed for AMVs derivation was the slowest without the first-guess test, but the other two had similar performance. Thus, applying the optical flow method in the target tracking process of AMVs algorithm, this study showed that the optical flow method is very effective as a first guess for model-independent AMVs derivation.

• Atmosphere
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.295-308
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• 2015

Based on the CMIP5 historical simulation datasets, we assessed the performance of state-of-the-art climate models in respect to the relationship between interannual variabilities of the North Pacific synoptic eddy (NPSE) and East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM). Observation (ERA-Interim) shows a high negative correlation (-0.73) between the interannual variabilities of East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) intensity and North Pacific synoptic eddy (NPSE) activity during the period of 1979~2005. Namely, a stronger (weaker) EAWM is related to a weaker (stronger) synoptic eddy activities over the North Pacific. This strong reverse relationship can be well explained by latitudinal distributions of the surface temperature anomalies over East Asian continent, which leads the variation of local baroclinicity and significantly weakens the baroclinic wave activities over the northern latitudes of $40^{\circ}N$. This feature is supported by the distribution of the meridional heat flux (${\overline{{\nu}^{\prime}{\theta}^{\prime}}}$) anomalies, which have negative (positive) values along the latitudes $40{\sim}50^{\circ}N$ for strong(weak) EAWM years. In this study, the historical simulations by 11 CMIP5 climate models (BCC-CSM1.1, CanESM2, GFDL-ESM2G, GFDL-ESM2M, HadGEM2-AO, HadGEM2-CC, IPSL-CM5A-LR, MPI-ESM-LR, MPI-ESM-MR, MRI-CGCM3, and NorESM1-M) are analyzed for DJF of 1979~2005. Correlation coefficient between the two phenomena is -0.59, which is comparable to that of observation. Model-to-model variation in this relationship is relatively large as the range of correlation coefficient is between -0.76 (HadGEM2-CC and HadGEM2-AO) and -0.33 (MRI-CGCM3). But, these reverse relationships are shown in all models without any exception. We found that the multi-model ensemble is qualitatively similar to the observation in reasoning (that is, latitudinal distribution of surface temperature anomalies, variation of local baroclinicity and meridional heat flux by synoptic eddies) of the reverse relationship. However, the uncertainty for weak EAWM is much larger than strong EAWM. In conclusion, we suggest that CMIP5 models as an ensemble have a good performance in the simulation of EAWM, NPSE, and their relationship.

• Atmosphere
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.257-275
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• 2016

Asian dust is a seasonal meteorological phenomenon influencing most East Asia, irregularly occurring during spring. Unusual heavy Asian dust event in winter was observed in Seoul, Korea, with up to $1,044{\mu}g\;m^{-3}$ of hourly mean $PM_{10}$, in 22~23 February 2015. Causes of such infrequent event has been studied using both ground based and spaceborne observations, as well as numerical simulations including ECMWF ERA Interim reanalysis, NOAA HYSPLIT backward trajectory analysis, and ADAM2-Haze simulation. Analysis showed that southern Mongolia and northern China, one of the areas for dust origins, had been warm and dry condition, i.e. no snow depth, soil temperature of ${\sim}0^{\circ}C$, and cumulative rainfall of 1 mm in February, along with strong surface winds higher than critical wind speed of $6{\sim}7.5m\;s^{-1}$ during 20~21 February. While Jurihe, China, ($42^{\circ}23^{\prime}56^{{\prime}{\prime}}N$, $112^{\circ}53^{\prime}58^{{\prime}{\prime}}E$) experienced $9,308{\mu}g\;m^{-3}$ of hourly mean surface $PM_{10}$ during the period, the Asian dust had affected the Korean Peninsula within 24 hours traveling through strong north-westerly wind at ~2 km altitude. KMA issued Asian dust alert from 1100 KST on 22nd to 2200 KST on 23rd since above $400{\mu}g\;m^{-3}$ of hourly mean surface $PM_{10}$. It is also important to note that, previously to arrival of the Asian dust, the Korean Peninsula was affected by anthropogenic air pollutants ($NO_3^-$, $SO_4^{2-}$, and $NH_4^+$) originated from the megacities and large industrial areas in northeast China. In addition, this study suggests using various data sets from modeling and observations as well as improving predictability of the ADAM2-Haze model itself, in order to more accurately predict the occurrence and impacts of the Asian dust over the Korean peninsula.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.687-701
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• 2014

Sea ice is generally accepted as an important factor to understand the process of earth climate changes and is the basis of earth system models for analysis and prediction of the climate changes. To continuously monitor sea ice changes at kilometer scale, it is demanded to create more accurate grid data from the current, limited sea ice data. In this paper we described a downscaling method for Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) Sea Ice Concentration (SIC) from 10 km to 1 km resolution using a weighting scheme of sea ice days ratio derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sea ice cover product that has a high correlation with the SIC. In a case study for Okhotsk Sea, the sea ice areas of both data (before and after downscaling) were identical, and the monthly means and standard deviations of SIC exhibited almost the same values. Also, Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analyses showed that three kinds of SIC data (ERA-Interim, original AMSR2, and downscaled AMSR2) had very similar principal components for spatial and temporal variations. Our method can apply to downscaling of other continuous variables in the form of ratio such as percentage and can contribute to monitoring small-scale changes of sea ice by providing finer SIC data.