• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.431-444
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• 2012

We simulated and compared present and future ocean circulation in the East China Sea using an East Asia Regional Ocean model. Mean climate states for 1990~1999 and 2030~2039 were used as surface conditions for simulations of present and future ocean circulation, which were derived from the simulations of three different global climate models, ECHAM5-MPI, GFDL-CM2.0 and MIROC3.2_hires, for the 20th century and those of 21st century as projected by the IPCC SRES A1B. East Asia Regional Ocean model simulated the detailed patterns of temperature, salinity and current fields under present and future climate conditions and their changes instead of the simple structures of global climate models. To some extent, there are consistent ocean circulation changes derived from the three pairs corresponding to the global climate model in so much as the temperature increases not only in winter but summer at both the surface and bottom and that temperature and salinity changes are prominent near the Chinese coast and in the Changjiang bank. However, the simulated circulations are different among each other depending on the prescribed atmospheric conditions not only under present climate but also with regard to future climate conditions. There is not a coincident tendency in ocean circulation changes between present and future simulations derived from the three pairs. This suggests that more simulations with different pairs are needed.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.545-561
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• 2018

Over the North East Asia, extreme anomalous precipitation were observed in 2013 and 2014. During 2013 summer the precipitation was found to be higher (two standard deviation) than the climatological mean of the region; whereas during 2014, which was a borderline El Ni?o year, precipitation was found to be lower (one standard deviation). To understand the differences of these two anomalous years the Global/Regional Integrated Model system (GRIMs) has been used. The study found that low landsurface temperature and high sea-surface temperature over ocean caused a smaller land-sea contrast of surface temperature between East Asia and North West Pacific Ocean in 2014, which could have caused an eastward shift of mean monsoon circulation in that year compared to the circulation in 2013. Due to a change in the lower level circulation and wind field over East Asia the evaporation and moisture transport patterns became very different in those two years. In 2013, this study found high latent heat flux over Eastern China, which implies an increased surface evaporation over that region, and the moisture transported to the north by the mean monsoon circulation; whereas, there was no correlated transport of moisture to the North East Asia during 2014. The precipitable water over North East Asia has a stronger correlation with the latent heat flux over southern land region than that from Ocean region in the eastern side in both the years. A new approach is proposed to estimate the sub-grid scale hydrometeors from GRIMs, overestimated in the existing model.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.613-619
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• 2007

Mesoscale low is often observed over the downstream region of the East Sea (or, northwest coast off the Japan Islands) during East-Asia winter monsoon. The low system causes a heavy snowfall at the region. A series of numerical experiments were conducted with the aid of a regional model (MM5 ver. 3.5) to examine the formation mechanism of the mesoscale low. The following results were obtained: 1) A well-developed mesoscale low was simulated by the regional model under real topography, NCEP reanalysis, and OISST; 2) The mesoscale low was simulated under a zonally averaged SST without topography. This implies that the meridional gradient of SST is the main factor in the formation of a mesoscale low; 3) A thermal contrast ($>10^{\circ}C$) of land-sea and topography-induced disturbance served as the second important factor for the formation; 4) Paektu Mountain caused the surface wind to decelerate downstream, which created a more favorable environment for thermodynamic modification than that was found in a flat topography; and 5) The types of cumulus parameterizations did not affect the development of the mesoscale low.

• Atmosphere
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.55-68
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• 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 the Korean earth science society
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.770-783
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• 2011

In this study, we performed a downscaling of an ECHAM5 simulated dataset for the current and future climate produced under the Special Report on Emission Scenarios A1B (SRES A1B) by utilizing the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Regional Spectral Model (RSM). The current climate simulation was performed for the period 1980-2000 and the future climate run for the period 2040-2070 for the COordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX)'s East Asia domain. The RSM is properly able to reproduce the climatological fields from the evaluation of the current climate simulation. Future climatological precipitation during the summer season is increased over the tropical Oceans, the maritime-continent, and Japan. In winter, on the other hand, precipitation is increased over the tropical Indian Ocean, the maritime-continents and the Western North Pacific, and decreased over the eastern tropical Indian Ocean. For the East Asia region few significant changes are detected in the precipitation climatological field. However, summer rainfall shows increasing trend after 2050 over the region. The future climate ground temperature shows a clear increasing trend in comparison with the current climate. In response to global warming, atmospheric warming is clearly detected, which strengthens the upper level trough.

• Atmosphere
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.115-129
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• 2019

Surface winds over the ocean influence not only the climate change through air-sea interactions but the coastal erosion through the changes in wave height and direction. Thus, demands on a reliable projection of future changes in surface winds have been increasing in various fields. For the future projections, climate models have been widely used and, as a priori, their simulations of surface wind are required to be evaluated. In this study, we evaluate the climatological mean surface winds over the Korean Waters simulated by five regional climate models participating in Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) for East Asia (EA), an international regional climate model inter-comparison project. Compared with the ERA-interim reanalysis data, the CORDEX-EA models, except for HadGEM3-RA, produce stronger wind both in summer and winter. The HadGEM3-RA underestimates the wind speed and inadequately simulate the spatial distribution especially in summer. This summer wind error appears to be coincident with mean sea-level pressure in the North Pacific. For wind direction, all of the CORDEX-EA models simulate the well-known seasonal reversal of surface wind similar to the ERA-interim. Our results suggest that especially in summer, large-scale atmospheric circulation, downscaled by regional models with spectral nudging, significantly affect the regional surface wind on its pattern and strength.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.253-264
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• 2012

In the northwestern Pacific, spawning of the common squid, Todarodes pacificus, occurs at continental shelf and slope areas of 100-500 m, and the optimum temperature for the spawning and survival of paralarvae is assumed to be $18-23^{\circ}C$. To predict the spawning ground of Todarodes pacificus under future climate conditions, we simulated the present and future ocean circulations, using an East Asia regional ocean model (Modular Ocean Model, MOM version3), projected by two different global climate models (MPI_echam5, MIROC_hires), under an IPCC SRES A1B emission scenario. Mean climate states for 1990-1999 and 2030-2039 from 20th and 21th Century Climate Change model simulation (from the IPCC 4th Assessment Report) were used as surface conditions for simulations, and we examined changes in spawning ground between the 1990s and 2030s. The results revealed that the distribution of spawning ground in the 2030s in both climate models shifted northward in the East China Sea and East Sea, for both autumn and winter populations, compared to that of the 1990s. Also, the spawning area (with $1/6^{\circ}{\times}1/6^{\circ}$ grid) in the 2030s of the autumn and winter populations will decline by 11.6% (MPI_echam5) to 30.8% (MIROC_hires) and 3.0% (MPI_echam5) to 18.2% (MIROC_hires), respectively, from those of the 1990s.

• Atmosphere
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.75-90
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• 2005

This study examines the impacts of land cover changes on the East Asia summer monsoon with the National Center for Atmospheric Research Regional Climate Model (NCAR RegCM2), coupled with Biosphere Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS). To assess the goals, two types of land cover maps were used in the simulation of summer climate. One type was NCAR land cover map (CTL) and the other was current land cover map derived from satellite data (land cover: LCV). Warm and cold surface temperature biases of $1-3^{\circ}C$ occurred over central China and Mongolia in CTL. The model produced excessive precipitation over northern land area but less over southern ocean of the model domain. Changes of biophysical parameters, such as albedo, minimum stomatal resistance and roughness length, due to the land cover changes resulted in the alteration of land-atmosphere interactions. Latent heat flux and wind speed in LCV increased noticeably over central China where deciduous broad leaf trees have been replaced by mixed farm and irrigated crop. As a result, the systematic warm biases over central China were greatly reduced in LCV. Strong cooling of central China decreased pressure gradient between East Asian continent and Pacific Ocean. The decreased pressure gradient suppressed the northward transport of moisture from south China and South China Sea. These changes reduced not only the excessive precipitation over north China and Mongolia but also less precipitation over south China. However, the land cover changes increased the precipitation over the Korean Peninsula and the Japan Islands, especially in July and August.

• Atmosphere
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.361-376
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• 2020

This study evaluates multiple Regional Climate Models (RCMs) in simulating temperature and precipitation over the Far East Asia (FEA) and estimates the portions of the total uncertainty originating in the RCMs and the driving Global Climate Models (GCMs) using nine present-day (1981~2000) climate data obtained from combinations of three GCMs and three RCMs in the CORDEX-EA phase2. Downscaling using the RCMs generally improves the present temperature and precipitation simulated in the GCMs. The mean temperature climate in the RCM simulations is similar to that in the GCMs; however, RCMs yield notably better spatial variability than the GCMs. In particular, the RCMs generally yield positive added values to the variability of the summer temperature and the winter precipitation. Evaluating the uncertainties by the GCMs (VARGCM) and the RCMs (VARRCM) on the basis of two-way ANOVA shows that VARRCM is greater than VARGCM in contrast to previous studies which showed VARGCM is larger. In particular, in the winter temperature, the ocean has a very large VARRCM of up to 30%. Precipitation shows that VARRCM is greater than VARGCM in all seasons, but the difference is insignificant. In the following study, we will analyze how the uncertainty of the climate model in the present-day period affects future climate change prospects.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.309-324
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• 2008

In this study the retrieval algorithms have been developed to retrieve total precipitable water (TPW) from Terra/Aqua Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) infrared measurements using a physical iterative retrieval method and a split-window technique over East Asia. Retrieved results from these algorithms were validated against Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) over ocean and radiosonde observation over land and were analyzed for investigating the key factors affecting the accuracy of results and physical processes of retrieval methods. Atmospheric profiles from Regional Data Assimilation and Prediction System (RDAPS), which produces analysis and prediction field of atmospheric variables over East Asia, were used as first-guess profiles for the physical retrieval algorithm. We used RTTOV-7 radiative transfer model to calculate the upwelling radiance at the top of the atmosphere. For the split-window technique, regression coefficients were obtained by relating the calculated brightness temperature to the paired radiosonde-estimated TPW. Physically retrieved TPWs were validated against SSM/I and radiosonde observations for 14 cases in August and December 2004 and results showed that the physical method improves the accuracy of TPW with smaller bias in comparison to TPWs of RDAPS data, MODIS products, and TPWs from split-window technique. Although physical iterative retrieval can reduce the bias of first-guess profiles and bring in more accurate TPWs, the retrieved results show the dependency upon initial guess fields. It is thought that the dependency is due to the fact that the water vapor absorption channels used in this study may not reflect moisture features in particular near surface.