• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.47 no.7
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• pp.643-656
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• 2014

The homogeneity analysis of temporal (monthly, seasonal and annual) climate aridity index trend was accomplished for 43 climate measurement stations in South Korea. Furthermore, 43 stations were grouped into 9 different regions and the temporal and regional homogeneity of climate aridity index trends in each region and entire 9 regions were analyzed. For analysis, monthly, seasonal and annual climate aridity indexes of 43 study stations were estimated using precipitation and potential evapotranspiration calculated from FAO Penman-Monteith equation. The Mann-Kendall statistical test for significant trend was accomplished using the estimated climate aridity indexes and the results of trend test (Z scores) were used to analyze the temporal and regional homogeneity of climate aridity index trends. The study results showed the temporal and regional homogeneity of climate aridity index trends for individual and entire 9 regions. However, the homogeneity and the extent of aridity index trend showed different patterns temporally and regionally.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.822-833
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• 2010

Temperature increase due to climate changes causes change of water temperature in rivers which results in change of water quality etc. and the change of river ecosystem has a great impact on human life. Analyzing the impact of current climate changes on air and water temperature is an important thing in adapting to the climate changes. This study examined the effect of climate changes through analyzing air temperature trend for Nakdong river basin and analyzed the elasticity of air-water temperature to understand the effect of climate changes on water temperature. For analysis air temperature trend, collecting air temperature data from the National Weather Service on main points in Nakdong river basin, and resampling them at the units of year, season and month, used as data for air temperature trend analysis. Analyzing for elasticity of air-water temperature, the data were collected by the Water Environment Information system for water temperature, while air temperature data were collected at the National Weather Service point nearest in the water temperature point. And using the results of trend analysis and elasticity analysis, the effect of climate changes on water temperature was examined estimating future water temperature in 20 years and 50 years after. It is judged that analysis on mutual impact between factors such as heat budget, precipitation and evapotranspiration on river water temperature affected by climate changes and river water temperature is necessary.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.663-676
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• 1996

The analyzed results of observed precipitation and its pH in Kwangiu for 262 days from fan. 1, 1991 to Dec. 31, 1995 are as follows. The annual mean pH was 5.7, and the monthly mean pH values of January-May and November were less than 5.6 in Kwangiu. The ratio of acid rain for these periods was about 48.1%, almost half that of the total observed days. In March, the pH was 5.4 and the ratio of acid precipitation was 69%, an especially serious situation. In the spring, the pH value was 5.5, thus weakly acidic. The pH of precipitation tended to decrease with greater precipitation. The relation between persistent time and pH of precipitation is variable, but if the persistent time is long, the pH is constant and low. It is fortunate that there is an increasing trend of pH in interannual variation, but it is thought important that the amplitude of variation of pH in 1995 was high and the pH value was 4.1 in October and November. Because heavy and persistent precipitation effects the accumulation of acidity, more concern about acid rain is needed.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.47 no.11
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• pp.1095-1105
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• 2014

A spatial downscaling method using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) Regression for 25 km Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Monthly precipitation is proposed. The nonlinear relationship among hydrometeorological variables and precipitation was effectively depicted by the SVM for predicting downscaled grid precipitation. The accuracy of spatially downscaled precipitation was estimated by comparing with rain gauge data from sixty-four stations and found to be improved than the original TRMM data in overall. Especially the positive bias of the original TRMM data was effectively removed after the downscaling procedure. The spatial distributions of 25 km and 1 km grid precipitation were generally similar, while the local spatial trend was better detected by 1 km grid precipitation. The downscaled grid data derived from the proposed method can be applied in hydrological modelling for higher accuracy and further be studied for developing optimized downscaling method incorporation other regression methods.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.219-228
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• 2022

This study examined the relationship between the number of forest fires and days with no rainfall based on the national forest fire statistics data of the Korea Forest Service and meteorological data from the Open MET Data Portal of the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA; data.kma.go.kr) for the last 30 years (1991-2021). As for the trend in precipitation amount and non-rainfall days, the rainfall and the days with rainfall decreased in 2010 compared to those in 1990s. In terms of the number of forest fires that occurred in February-May accounted for 75% of the total number of forest fires, followed by 29% in April and 25% in March. In 2000s, the total number of forest fires was 5,226, indicating the highest forest fire activity. To analyze the relationship between regional distribution of non-rainfall periods (days) and number of forest fires, the non-rainfall period was categorized into five groups (0 days, 1-10 days, 11-20 days, 21-30 days, and 31 days or longer). During the spring fire danger season, the number of forest fires was the largest when the non-rainfall period was 11-20 days; during the autumn fire precaution period, the number of forest fires was the largest when the non-rainfall period was 1-10 days, 11-20 days, and 21-30 days, showing differences in the duration of forest fire occurrence by region. The 30-year trend indicated that large forest fires occurred only between February and May, and in terms of the relationship with the non-rainfall period groups, large fires occurred when the non-rainfall period was 1-10 days. This signifies that in spring season, the dry period continued throughout the country, indicating that even a short duration of consecutive non-rainfall days poses a high risk of large forest fires.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2023.05a
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• pp.178-178
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• 2023

Drought and flooding have historically coexisted in Korea, occurring at different times and with varying cycles and trends. The drought indicators measured were (PDSI), (SPI), and (SPEI) in order to statistically analyze the annual or periodic drought occurrence and objectively evaluate statistical characteristics such as the periodicity, tendency, and frequency of occurrence of droughts in the Doam watershed. To compute potential evapotranspiration (PET), both Thornthwaite (Thor) and Penman-Monteith (PM) parameterizations were considered, and the differences between the two PET estimators were analyzed. Hence, SPIs 3 and SPIs 6 revealed a tendency to worsen drought in the spring and winter and a tendency to alleviate drought in the summer in the study area. The seasonal variability trend did not occur in the SPIs 12 and PDSI, as it did in the drought index over a short period. As a result of the drought trend study, the drought from winter to spring gets more severe, in addition to the duration of the drought, although the periodicity of the recurrence of the drought ranged from 3 years to 6 years at the longest, indicating that SPIs 3 showed a brief time of around 1 year. SPIs 6 and SPIs 12 had a term of 4 to 6 years, and PDSI had a period of roughly 6 years. Based on the indicators of the PDSI, SPI, and SPEI, the drought severity increases under climate change conditions with the decrease in precipitation and increased water demand as a consequence of the temperature increase. Therefore, our findings show that national and practical measures are needed for both winter and spring droughts, which happen every year, as well as large-scale and extreme droughts, which happen every six years.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.320-328
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• 1992

The soybean yield forcasting models based on climatic elements in six locations were estimated by the STEPWISE/MAXR, Cp statistics and GLM procedure of SAS. The climatic elements were aerial temperature, sunshine hours and precipitation from May to October in 20 years. The investigated six locations were Chunchon, Suwon, Cheongju, Kwangju, Iri and Jinju. The important climatic elements for main effects in Chunchon model were August sunshine hours-linear term, August precipitation-quadratic. June temperature to August precipitation and May temperature to August precipitation were interaction terms. The quadratic August precipitation was assumed to be related to yield in Chunchon. The main effects of Suwon were linear-June temperature, quadratic June sunshine hours and June precipitation. These terms affected yields negatively. The main effects of Cheongju were linear June temperature and quadratic August precipitation. May temperature to June precipitation, July to August precipitations were interactions. The main effects of Kwangju were linear July precipitation, quadratic June temperature and July precipitation. June to July sunshine hours of interaction terms influenced yield negatively. The main effects of Iri were linear May sunshine hours, quadratic May and July sunshine hours. May temperature to May precipitation and June to July precipitations affected yields negatively. The main effects of Jinju were linear June and August precipitations. August temperature to August sunshine hours, June sunshine hours to July precipitation and June to August precipitation were interactions. In linear terms, June and August precipitations and, in interactions, August to August sunshine hours were negative efficacies respectively. The included year variables in Chunchon, Suwon, Kwangju, and Jinju model building were recognized as a linear trend based on an assumption that the technological factors have improved through times.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.40 no.8
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• pp.629-641
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• 2007

This study estimated the urbanization effect of Seoul, the largest city in Korea, on its rainfall. For a comparative analysis, two different data sets are used: One is the precipitation data at the Jeonju rain gauge station, which has a relatively long record length but least urbanization effect, and the other at the Ichon rain gauge station, which has a short record length but located very near to Seoul with least urbanization effect. Also, the difference of the rainfall between Seoul and Jeonju rain gauge stations, as an indicator of urbanization effect, is quantified by use of the intervention model. As a result, it was found that the maximum rainfall intensity of the annual maximum rainfall events shows the increasing trend, its duration the decreasing trend, and the mean intensity the decreasing trend especially after 1960. Also, the quantification of urbanization effect using the intervention model shows that the increasing trend of rainfall intensity and total volume is still on going.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.3B
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• pp.243-255
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• 2010

The spatial distribution of pan evaporation and pan evaporation trends have been studied. In this study, pan evaporation data from 1973 to 1990 for 56 climatological stations were analyzed. In addition to annual average daily pan evaporation, monthly average daily pan evaporation in April, July, October and January were analyzed, considering seasonal effect. The study results indicate that in case of annual average daily pan evaporation, 38 stations out of 56 stations show decreasing trend. In case of average daily pan evaporation in January, 33 stations show decreasing trend. In April, 38 stations show increasing trend. In July, 47 stations show decreasing trend. In October, 35 stations show increasing trend. Therefore, on the whole, pan evaporation tended to decrease in January, July, and annual basis. On the other hand, pan evaporation tended to increase in April and October. Furthermore, pan evaporation trend in each individual region shows also different trend even though the region is located nearby, indicating that there are geographical and topographical effects on pan evaporation trend. Pan evaporation data and climatic data from 1973 to 2006 for 11 climatological stations were used for trend analysis. Climatic variables such as temperature, relative humidity and wind speed show same or opposite trend direction compared with pan evaporation in annual or monthly basis. Annual and monthly solar radiation trends show the same direction compared with pan evaporation; however, annual and monthly precipitation trends show the opposite direction compared with pan evaporation.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.45 no.9
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• pp.887-900
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• 2012

Drought is a non-negligible disaster of nature and it is mainly caused by rainfall shortage for a long time though there are many definitions of drought. 'Standard Precipitation Index' (SPI) that is widely used to express the level of meteorological drought intensity has a limit of not being able to consider the hydrological changes such as rainfall and evapotranspiration caused by climate change, because it does not consider the temperature-related variables other than the precipitation. Recently, however, 'Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index' (SPEI), a drought index of new concept which is similar to SPI but can reflect the effect of temperature variability as well as the rainfall change caused by climate variation, was developed. In this study, the changes of drought occurrence in South Korea were analyzed by applying SPEI for meteorological data (1973~2011) of 60 climate observatories under Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). As the result of application, both of SPI and SPEI showed the trend of deepening drought in spring and winter and mitigating drought in summer for the entire nation, with SPI showing greater drought intensity than SPI. Also, SPI and SPEI with 12 months of duration showed that severe droughts with low frequency of around 6 years are generally being repeated.