• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.1-21
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• 2015

The present study aims to characterize the synoptic climatic patterns of winter extreme low temperature events occurred in different regions of Korea based on daily temperature data observed at 61 weather stations under the supervision of the Korea Meteorological Administation and NCEP/NCAR reanalysis I data for the recent 40 years (1973~2012) period. Analyses of daily maximum and minimum temperatures below 10th percentile thresholds show that high frequencies of winter extreme low temperature events appear across the entire regions of Korea or in either the western or eastern half region divided by major mountain ridges at the 2~7 dayintervals particularly in the first half of the winter period (before mid-January). Composite analyses of surface synoptic climatic data including sea level pressure and wind vector reveal that 13 regional types of winter extreme low temperature events in Korea are closely associated with the relative location and intensity of both the Siberian high pressure and the Aleutian low pressure systems as well as major mountain ridges. Investigations of mid-troposphere (500 hPa) synoptic climatic charts demonstrate that the blocking-like upper troposphere low pressure system advecting the cold air from the Arctic toward the Korean Peninsula may provide favorable synoptic conditions for the outbreaks of winter extreme low temperature events in Korea. These results indicate that the monitoring of synoptic scale climatic systems in East Asia including the Siberian high pressure system, the Aleutian low pressure system and upper level blocking system is critical to the improvement of the predictability of winter extreme low temperature events in Korea.

• Proceedings of the Korean Quaternary Association Conference
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• 2004.06a
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• pp.24-25
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• 2004

It is well known that there is an inverse relationship between the strength of Indian summer monsoon Rainfall (ISMR) and extent of Eurasian snow cover/depth in the preceding season. Tibetan snow cover/depth also affects the Asian monsoon rainy season largely. The positive correlation between Tibetan sensible heat flux and southeast Asian rainfall suggest an inverse relationship between Tibetan snow cover and southeast Asian rainfall. Developments in Regional Climate Models suggest that the effect of Tibetan snow on the ISMR can be well studied by Limited Area Models (LAMs). LAMs are used for regional climate studies and operational weather forecast of several hours to 3 days in future. The Eta model developed by the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), the Fifth-Generation NCAR/Penn State Mesoscale Model (MM5) and Regional Climate Model (RegCM) have been used for weather prediction as well as for the study of present-day climate and variability over different parts of the world. Regional Climate Model (RegCM3) has been widely . used for various mesoscale studies. However, it has not been tested to study the characteristics of circulation features and associated rainfall over India so far. In the present study, Regional Climate Model (RegCM-3) has been integrated from 1 st April to 30th September for the years 1993-1996 and monthly mean monsoon circulation features and rainfall simulated by the model at 55km resolution have been studied for the Indian summer monsoon season. Characteristics of wind at 850hPa and 200hPa, temperature at 500hPa, surface pressure and rainfall simulated by the model have been examined for two convective schemes such as Kuo and Grell with Arakawa-Schubert as the closure scheme, Model simulated monsoon circulation features have been compared with those of NCEP/NCAR reanalyzed fields and the rainfall with those of India Meteorological Department (IMD) observational rainfall datasets, Comparisons of wind and temperature fields show that Grell scheme is closer to the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis, The influence of Tibetan snowdepth in spring season on the summer monsoon circulation features and subsequent rainfall over India have been examined. For such sensitivity experiment, NIMBUS-7 SMMR snowdepth data have been used as a boundary condition in the RegCM3, Model simulation indicates that ISMR is reduced by 30% when 10cm of snow has been introduced over Tibetan region in the month of previous April. The existence of Tibetan snow in RegCM3 also indicates weak lower level monsoon westerlies and upper level easterlies.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• v.2
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• pp.744-747
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• 2006

The sea level of the Java Sea is reproduced using HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) setting up in the horizontal grid from $100^{\circ}E$ to $125^{\circ}E$ and from $10^{\circ}S$ to $8^{\circ}N$. The model is initialized by ocean temperature and salinity profiles from Levitus 1998 and forced by the atmospheric field derived from NCEP reanalysis. In this research HYCOM is applied to explain the El $Ni{\tilde{n}}o$ Southern Oscillation (ENSO) impacts on the sea level of the Java Sea. The monthly tide gauge sea level data are produced based on hourly sea level data from 1993 to 1997. Altimeter sea level data are based on weekly merged products between TOPEX/Poseidon and ERS absolute dynamic topography (ADT). The simulated sea level both HYCOM and ADT agree well with the tide gauge sea level. The sea level of the Java Sea is high during the La $Ni{\tilde{n}}a$ period and low during the El $Ni{\tilde{n}}o$ period.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 1998.09a
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• pp.37-42
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• 1998

Latent and sensible heat fluxes over the global oceans are estimated using SSM/I (Special Sensor Microwave Imager) and AVHRR MCSST (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer Multi-Channel Sea Surface Temperature). The heat fluxes are computed from SSM/I wind speeds and surface humidity, the MCSST, and NCEP Reanalysis sea level pressures and 2-m temperatures from 1996 to 1997. The diabatic conditions bulk formula (Kondo, 1975) is used to compute the heat fluxes. To validate, the derived fluxes are compared to the measurements of 3 JMA buoys. The wind speeds and surface humidity derived from SSM/I have accuracies of 1.37m/s and 1.7g/kg, respectively. The heat fluxes were estimated these factors and the standard error of the latent and sensible heat fluxes are 5.53 W/m$^2$ and 3.33 W/m$^2$. The latest El-Nino phenomenon started at the beginning of 1997 and this event was larger than any others. We compare the heat fluxes in 1997 with the fluxes in 1996 and investigate the spatial movement of meteorological factors as well as the heat fluxes associated with El-Nino appearance.

• Atmosphere
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.143-149
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• 2011

A new multi-timescale analysis method, Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD), is used to diagnose the variation of the MJO activity determined by 850hPa and 200hPa zonal winds from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) Reanalysis data for the 56-yr period from 1950 to 2005. The results show that MJO activity can be decomposed into 9 quasi-periodic oscillations and a trend. With each level of contribution of the quasi-periodic oscillation discussed, the bi-seasonal oscillation, the interannual oscillation and the trend of the MJO activity are the most prominent features. The trend increases almost linearly, so that prior to around 1978 the activity of the MJO is lower than that during the latter part. This may be related to the tropical sea surface temperature(SST). It is speculated that the interdecadal change in the MJO activity appeared in around 1978 is related to the warmer SST in the equatorial warm pool, especially over the Indian Ocean.

• Atmosphere
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.669-683
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• 2015

In this study, we investigated the prediction skills of four multiple linear regression methods for monthly air temperature over South Korea. We used simulation results from four regional climate models (RegCM4, SNURCM, WRF, and YSURSM) driven by two boundary conditions (NCEP/DOE Reanalysis 2 and ERA-Interim). We selected 15 years (1989~2003) as the training period and the last 5 years (2004~2008) as validation period. The four regression methods used in this study are as follows: 1) Homogeneous Multiple linear Regression (HMR), 2) Homogeneous Multiple linear Regression constraining the regression coefficients to be nonnegative (HMR+), 3) non-homogeneous multiple linear regression (EMOS; Ensemble Model Output Statistics), 4) EMOS with positive coefficients (EMOS+). It is same method as the third method except for constraining the coefficients to be nonnegative. The four regression methods showed similar prediction skills for the monthly air temperature over South Korea. However, the prediction skills of regression methods which don't constrain regression coefficients to be nonnegative are clearly impacted by the existence of outliers. Among the four multiple linear regression methods, HMR+ and EMOS+ methods showed the best skill during the validation period. HMR+ and EMOS+ methods showed a very similar performance in terms of the MAE and RMSE. Therefore, we recommend the HMR+ as the best method because of ease of development and applications.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.268-275
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• 2005

One of the nonlinear statistical modelling, neural network method was applied to predict the Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies (SSTA) in the Nino regions, which represent El Nino indices. The data used as inputs in the training step of neural network model were the first seven empirical orthogonal functions in the tropical Pacific $(120^{\circ}\;E,\;20^{\circ}\;S-20^{\circ}\;N)$ obtained from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data. The period of 1951 to 1993 was adopted for the training of neural network model, and the period 1994 to 2003 for the forecasting validation. Forecasting results suggested that neural network models were resonable for SSTA forecasting until 9-month lead time. They also predicted greatly the development and decay of strong E1 Nino occurred in 1997-1998 years. Especially, Nino3 region appeared to be the best forecast region, while the forecast skills rapidly decreased since 9-month lead time. However, in the Nino1+2 region where they are relatively low by the influence of local effects, they did not decrease even after 9-month lead time.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.237-250
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• 2005

To investigate the air mass modification related with Yeongdong Heavy snowfall events, we examined sensible and latent heat fluxes on the East Sea, the energy exchange between atmosphere and ocean in this study. Sensible and latent heats were calculated by a bulk aerodynamic method, in which NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data and NOAA/AVHRR weekly SST data with high resolution were used. Among winter precipitation events in the Yeongdong region, 19 heavy precipitation events $(1995{\sim}2001)$ were selected and classified into three types (mountain, cold-coastal, and warm types). Mountain-type precipitation shows highly positive anomalies of sensible and latent heats over the southwestern part of the East Set When separating them into the two components due to variability of wind and temperature/ specific Humidity, it is shown that the wind components are dominant. Cold-coastal-type precipitation also shows strong positive anomalies of sensible and latent heats over the northern part and over the central-northern part of the East Sea, respectively. It is shown that the sensible heat anomalies are caused mostly by the decrease of surface air temperature. So it can be explained that cold-coastal-type precipitation is closely related with the air mass modification due to cold air advection over warm ocean surface. But in warm-type precipitation, negative anomalies are found in the sensible and latent heat distributions. From this result, it may be postulated that warm-type precipitation is affected by the internal process of the atmosphere rather than the atmosphere-ocean interaction.

• Atmosphere
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.57-71
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• 2012

Influences of orographic and ocean effect, which depend on the detailed geographic characteristics, upon winter time (December-February) precipitation in the Yeongdong region are investigated. Most of precipitation events in the Yeongdong region during the wintertime are associated with moist northeasterly (coming from the northeast direction) winds and also the spatial distribution of precipitation shows a great difference between Mountain area (Daegwallyeong) and Coastal area (Gangneung). The linear correlation coefficient between the meteorological variables obtained from NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis Data and precipitation amount for each precipitation type is calculated. Mountain type precipitation is dominated by northeasterly wind speed of the low level (1000 hPa and 925 hPa) and characterized with more precipitation in mountain area than coastal area. However, Coastal type precipitation is affected by temperature difference between ocean and atmosphere, and characterized with more precipitation in coastal area than mountain area. The results are summarized as follows; In the case of mountain type precipitation, the correlation coefficient between wind speed at 1000 hPa (925 hPa) and precipitation amount at Daegwallyeong is 0.60 (0.61). The correlation is statistical significant at 1% level. In the case of coastal type precipitation, the correlation coefficient of temperature difference between ocean and 925 hPa (850 hPa) over the East sea area and precipitation amount at Gangneung is 0.33 (0.34). As for the mountain type precipitation, a detailed analysis was conducted in order to verify the relationship between precipitation amount at Daegwallyeong and low level wind speed data from wind profiler in Gangneung and Buoy in the East Sea. The results also show the similar behavior. This result indicates that mountain type precipitation in the Yeongdong region is closely related with easterly wind speed. Thus, the statistical analysis of the few selected meteorological variables can be a good indicator to estimate the precipitation totals in the Yeongdong region in winter time.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.721-733
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• 2009

To examine the fluctuations of aerosol number concentration with different size in the boundary layer of marine area during summer season, aerosol particles were assayed in the Ieodo Ocean Research Station, which is located 419 km southwest of Marado, the southernmost island of Korea, from 24 June to 4 July, 2008. The Laser Particle Counter (LPC) was used to measure the size of aerosol particles and NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data and sounding data were used to analyze the synoptic condition. The distribution of aerosol number concentration had a large variation from bigger particles more than 3 ${\mu}m$ in diameter to smaller particles more than 1 ${\mu}m$ in diameter with wind direction during precipitation. The aerosol number concentration decreased with increasing temperature. An increase (decrease) of small size of aerosol (0.3${\sim}$0.5 ${\mu}m$ in diameter) number concentration was induced by convergence (divergence) of the wind fields. The aerosol number concentration of bigger size more than 3 ${\mu}m$ in diameter after precipitation was removed as much as 89${\sim}$94% compared with aerosol number concentration before precipitation. It is considered that the larger aerosol particles would be more efficient for scavenging at marine boundary layer. In addition, the aerosol number concentration with divergence and convergence could be related with the occurrence and mechanism of aerosol in marine boundary layer.