• Atmosphere
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.415-427
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• 2011

In this study, the impacts of land surface conditions, land cover (LC) map and leaf area index (LAI), on the short-range weather forecast over the East-Asian region were examined using Unified Model (UM) coupled with the MOSES 2.2 (Met-Office Surface Exchange Scheme). Four types of experiments were performed at 12-km horizontal resolution with 38 vertical layers for two months, July and August 2009 through consecutive reruns of 72-hour every 12 hours, 00 and 12 UTC. The control experiment (CTRL) uses the original IGBP (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme) LC map and old MODIS (MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) LAI, the new LAI experiment (NLAI) uses improved monthly MODIS LAI. The new LC experiment (NLCE) uses KLC_v2 (Kongju National Univ. land cover), and the new land surface experiment (NLSE) uses KLC_v2 and new LAI. The reduced albedo and increased roughness length over southern part of China caused by the increased broadleaf fraction resulted in increase of land surface temperature (LST), air temperature, and sensible heat flux (SHF). Whereas, the LST and SHF over south-eastern part of Russia is decreased by the decreased needleleaf fraction and increased albedo. The changed wind speed induced by the LC and LAI changes also contribute the LST distribution through the change of vertical mixing and advection. The improvement of LC and LAI data clearly reduced the systematic underestimation of air temperature over South Korea. Whereas, the impacts of LC and LAI conditions on the simulation skills of precipitation are not systematic. In general, the impacts of LC changes on the short range forecast are more significant than that of LAI changes.

• The Korean Journal of Quaternary Research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.161-161
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• 2003

During the last century, most scientific questions related to climate change were focused on the evidence of anthropogenic global warming (IPCC, 2001). There are robust evidences of warming and also human-induced climate change. We now understand the global, mean change a little bit better; however, the uncertainties for regional climate change still remains large. The purpose of this study is to understand the past climate change over Korea based on the observational data and to project future regional climate change over East Asia using ECHAM4/HOPE model and MM5 for downscaling. There are significant evidences on regional climate change in Korea, from several variables. The mean annual temperature over Korea has increased about 1.5∼$1.7^{\circ}C$ during the 20th century, including urbanization effect in large cities which can account for 20-30% of warming in the second half of the 20th century. Cold extreme temperature events occurred less frequently especially in the late 20th century, while hot extreme temperature events were more common than earlier in the century. The seasonal and annual precipitation was analyzed to examine long-term trend on precipitation intensity and extreme events. The number of rainy days shows a significant negative trend, which is more evident in summer and fall. Annual precipitation amount tends to increase slightly during the same period. This suggests an increase of precipitation intensity in this area. These changes may influence on growing seasons, floods and droughts, diseases and insects, marketing of seasonal products, energy consumption, and socio-economic sectors. The Korean Peninsular is located at the eastern coast of the largest continent on the earth withmeso-scale mountainous complex topography and itspopulation density is very high. And most people want to hear what will happen in their back yards. It is necessary to produce climate change scenario to fit forhigh-resolution (in meteorological sense, but low-resolution in socio-economic sense) impact assessment. We produced one hundred-year, high-resolution (∼27 km), regional climate change scenario with MM5 and recognized some obstacles to be used in application. The boundary conditions were provided from the 240-year simulation using the ECHAM4/HOPE-G model with SRES A2 scenario. Both observation and simulation data will compose past and future regional climate change scenario over Korea.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.195-200
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• 2016

Water vapor leading various scale of atmospheric circulation and accounting for about 60% of the naturally occurring warming effect is important climate variables. Using the Total Precipitable Water (TPW) from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) operating on both Terra and Aqua, we study long-term Variation of TPW and define relationship among TPW and climatic parameters such as temperature and precipitation to quantitatively demonstrate the impact on climate change over East Asia focusing on the Korea peninsula. In this study, we used linear regression analysis to detect the correlation of TPW and temperature/precipitation and harmonic analysis to analyze changeable aspects of periodic characteristics. A result of analysis using linear regression analysis between TPW and climate elements, TPW shows a high determination coefficient ($R^2$) with temperature and precipitation (determination coefficient between TPW and temperature: 0.94, determination coefficient between TPW anomaly and temperature anomaly: 0.8, determination coefficient between TPW and precipitation: 0.73, determination coefficient between TPW anomaly and precipitation anomaly: 0.69). A result of harmonic analysis of TPW and precipitation of two-year to five-year cycle, amplitude contribution ratio of 3.5-year cycle are much higher and two phases are similar in 3.5-year cycle.

• Atmosphere
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.401-413
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• 2012

In this study, an investigation has been carried out to understand 1) temporal variation of rainfall amount in summer over south Korea during the 30-year period of 1979-2008 and 2) the relationship between the variation of rainfall amount and the change of large-scale monsoon circulation around 1993/1994 over East Asia. The analysis of rainfall amount is carried out separately for whole summer (June-August), climatological Changma period of 23 June-23 July, and August to consider variations within summer. To relate the variation of rainfall amount with the change of large-scale circulation, we have considered two 15-year periods of 1979-1993 and 1994-2008. This study has used observations at 58 stations in South Korea and NCEP-NCAR $2.5^{\circ}{\times}2.5^{\circ}$ reanalysis data. The major change in synoptic environment for the Changma period is characterized by the intensified anticyclone over Mongolia during 1994-2008, which results in a weak meridional oscillation of Changma front. As a result, rainfall amount for the Changma period and the frequency of extreme events have significantly increased after 1993/1994. A major change of synoptic environment for August is the significant westward extension of the western Pacific subtropical high, which allows not only more moisture transports but also stronger cyclonic circulation over the Korean peninsula. Rainfall amount for August and frequency of extreme events have also increased after 1993/1994. However, variability of rainfall amount is larger for August than that for the Changma period, with some years showing very dry August (monthly rainfall amount less than 150 mm).

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.237-251
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• 2011

This study presents a review on the recent climate change over the Korean peninsula, which has experienced a significant change due to the human-induced global warming more strongly than other regions. The recent measurement of carbon dioxide concentrations over the Korean peninsula shows a faster rise than the global average, and the increasing trend in surface temperature over this region is much larger than the global mean trend. Recent observational studies reporting the weakened cold extremes and intensified warm extremes over the region support consistently the increase of mean temperature. Surface vegetation greenness in spring has also progressed relatively more quickly. Summer precipitation over the Korean peninsula has increased by about 15% since 1990 compared to the previous period. This was mainly due to an increase in August. On the other hand, a slight decrease in the precipitation (about 5%) during Changma period (rainy season of the East Asian summer monsoon), was observed. The heavy rainfall amounts exhibit an increasing trend particularly since the late 1970s, and a consecutive dry-day has also increased primarily over the southern area. This indicates that the duration of precipitation events has shortened, while their intensity became stronger. During the past decades, there have been more stronger typhoons affecting the Korean peninsula with landing more preferentially over the southeastern area. Meanwhile, the urbanization effect is likely to contribute to the rapid warming, explaining about 28% of total temperature increase during the past 55 years. The impact of El Nino on seasonal climate over the Korean peninsula has been well established - winter [summer] temperatures was generally higher [lower] than normal, and summer rainfall tends to increase during El-Nino years. It is suggested that more frequent occurrence of the 'central-Pacific El-Nino' during recent decades may have induced warmer summer and fall over the Korean peninsula. In short, detection and attribution studies provided fundamental information that needed to construct more reliable projections of future climate changes, and therefore more comprehensive researches are required for better understanding of past climate variations.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.429-439
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• 2005

The propose of this study is to identify distributional characteristics of winter droughts through occurrence frequencies and to analyze synoptic characteristics on the sea level pressure fields and 500hPa levels in Korea. The regional distributions of winter droughts in occurrence frequency vary according to the monthly regional distributions of the variabilities of precipitation in Korea. In January and December, the eastern parts of Korea where the variabilities of precipitation show high, have high rate of drought frequencies, while the western parts have low rate of it. It means that the regional distribution of the drought frequencies in January and December shows the east-high and west-low pattern, In February the frequencies show the north-high and south-low pattern. In the distributions of the sea-level pressure and 500hPa level height anomalies, the positive anomalies appear around Korean Peninsula and Siberian high area, the negative anomalies on the Aleutian low area and the western parts of North Pacific Ocean during the drought period in January and February. The droughts appear when the inflow of warm and humid air from the south eastern parts blocked by the prevailing pressure patterns of the west-high and east-low. Therefore, the zonal wind of the Korean Peninsula is strong. The droughts of December reflect not only low frequencies of cyclone occurrence, also small inflow of warm and humid air from the southern parts stemming from positive anomalies over whole middle latitude of eastern parts of Asia including Korean Peninsula.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.1151-1159
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• 2014

In this study, two global simple indices are used to investigate climate variability and change in observations. Land-Ocean Contrast (LOC) is an index of area-averaged surface temperature contrast between land and ocean. Meridional Temperature Gradient (MTG) is defined as the mean meridional temperature gradient in the Northern Hemisphere from mid to high latitude and sub-tropical zonal bands. These indices have direct or indirect effects on changing in atmospheric circulations and atmospheric moisture transport from north-south or east-west into East Asia (EA). In addition, warm season hydrometeorology in EA is highly associated with water supplies for coupled human and natural systems including drinking water, irrigation, hydropower generation as well as fisheries. Therefore, in this study, we developed an empirical separation approach for summer rainfall from typhoon and monsoon. An exploratory analysis was also conducted to identify the regional patterns of summer monsoon precipitation over the Korean peninsula within the context of changes in different types of temperature gradients. The results show significant and consistent changes in summer monsoon rainfall during the summer season (June-September) in South Korea.

• The Korean Journal of Quaternary Research
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• v.20 no.1 s.26
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• pp.51-66
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• 2006

The climate of the last glacial maximum (LGM) in northeast Asia is simulated with an atmospheric general circulation model of NCAR CCM3 at spectral truncation of T170, corresponding to a grid cell size of roughly 75 km. Modern climate is simulated by a prescribed sea surface temperature and sea ice provided from NCAR, and contemporary atmospheric CO2, topography, and orbital parameters, while LGM simulation was forced with the reconstructed CLIMAP sea surface temperatures, sea ice distribution, ice sheet topography, reduced $CO_2$, and orbital parameters. Under LGM conditions, surface temperature is markedly reduced in winter by more than $18^{\circ}C$ in the Korean west sea and continental margin of the Korean east sea, where the ocean exposed to land in the LGM, whereas in these areas surface temperature is warmer than present in summer by up to $2^{\circ}C$. This is due to the difference in heat capacity between ocean and land. Overall, in the LGM surface is cooled by $4{\sim}6^{\circ}C$ in northeast Asia land and by $7.1^{\circ}C$ in the entire area. An analysis of surface heat fluxes show that the surface cooling is due to the increase in outgoing longwave radiation associated with the reduced $CO_2$ concentration. The reduction in surface temperature leads to a weakening of the hydrological cycle. In winter, precipitation decreases largely in the southeastern part of Asia by about $1{\sim}4\;mm/day$, while in summer a larger reduction is found over China. Overall, annual-mean precipitation decreases by about 50% in the LGM. In northeast Asia, evaporation is also overall reduced in the LGM, but the reduction of precipitation is larger, eventually leading to a drier climate. The drier LGM climate simulated in this study is consistent with proxy evidence compiled in other areas. Overall, the high-resolution model captures the climate features reasonably well under global domain.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.45 no.12
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• pp.1309-1319
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• 2012

The East Asia (EA) region including China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea are especially vulnerable to hydrometerological extremes during the boreal summer (June-September). Therefore, this study pursued an exploratory analysis to improve better understanding of the potential impacts of the PJ pattern on WNP Tropical cyclone (TC) activity and TC-affected extremes based on the Korean Nakdong River Basin. The results show that during the positive PJ years, the large-scale atmospheric environments tend more favorable for the TC activity than those in the negative PJ years. KP-influenced TCs during the positive (negative) PJ years are likely to occur more southwestward (northeastward), recurve at more northwestward (northeastward) locations, and indicate increase (decrease) in frequency over Korea and Japan. Consequently, TCs making landfall are more exhibited over the southeastern portions of South Korea during the positive PJ years.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.45-59
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• 2008

This study aims to analyze the interdecadal variation of relationship between Indian Ocean sea surface temperature (SST) and East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) during the period of 1948-2005. In the pre-period, which is from 1948 to 1975, the relationship between Indian Ocean SST and East Asian summer rainfall anomaly (EASRA) is very weak. However, in the post-period, which is trom 1980 to 2005, Indian Ocean SST is significantly positively correlated with EASRA. The equatorial Indian Ocean SST has a significantly positive correlation with EASM in spring, while Indian Ocean SST near the bay of Bengal has a positive relationship in summer for the post-period. Also the interdecadal variation of the correlation between Indian Ocean SST and EASRA is significant, but that between EASRA and the El $Ni{\tilde{n}}o$-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is not. Atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) test results show the pattern of increased precipitation in the zonal belt region including South Korea and Japan and the pattern of decreased precipitation in the northeastern part of Asia, which are similar to the real climate. The increase of the precipitation in August from the model run is also similar to the real climate variation. Model results indicate that the Indian Ocean SST warming could intensify the convection over the vicinity of the Philippines and the Bay of Bengal, which forces to move northward the convection center. This warming strengthens the EASM and weakens the WNPM.