• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.31-46
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• 1997

The purposes of this paper are to classify the spatial distribution types of precipitation by making daily isohyetal maps based on the winter daily precipitation and to analyse both the distributional characteristics of precipitation during the winter in South Korea and the synoptic characteristics related to them. Also, the correspondence between the spatial distribution types of precipitation and the synoptic characteristics occuring among them is examined with regards to pressure patterns and then precipitation distribution types. In addition, the characteristics of the pressure fields and temperature fields in 850hPa, 700hPa, and 500hPa level were analysed to find out the difference between the Ullung-do type and the Ullung-do${\cdot}$Honam type, which have similar characteristics on the surface weather map. As a result, the Ullung-do area showed a high frequency of occurrence regardless of precipitation classes, the East Coast area revealed a higher frequency of occurrence in over the 5mm section, while the Honam area had high frequency of occurrence in the 1~5mm section. There are twelve distribution types of precipitation during the winter. These distribution types show clear changes according to the season. The difference in precipitation distribution between the Ullung-do type and the Ullung-do${\cdot}$Honam type has a close relationship with the aspect of the upper cold air advection rather than the direction and the speed of the wind.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.1-1
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• 1995

An attempt was made to study the subdivision of Korea by the annual amount and the annual change pattern of monthly precipitation days(that is one of the important elements of the precipitation characteristics), using the mean values for the years 1961-1990 at the 68 stations. The amplitudes of annual change were normalized and using these values, the principal component analysis was applied to determine the annual change patterns. The results show that they are expressed by the combinations of the three change patterns in almost whole regions of Korea. As a result,the annual change pattern of precipitation days in Korea is classified into 8 types from A to e,in detail, 36 types from A0 to e$\circled2$.And regional division of precipitation days in Korea is divided into 13 regions from I a to IIIC,into detail, 41 regions from I no to IIICl.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.387-402
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• 1995

An attempt was made to study the subdivision of Korea by the annual amount and the annual change pattern of monthly precipitation days(that is one of the important elements of the precipitation characteristics), using the mean values for the years 1961-1990 at the 68 stations. The amplitudes of annual change were normalized and using these values, the principal component analysis was applied to determine the annual change patterns. The results show that they are expressed by the combinations of the three change patterns in almost whole regions of Korea. As a result, the annual change pattern of precipitation days in Korea is classified into 8 types from A to e, in detail, 36 types from A0 to e$\circled2$.And regional division of precipitation days in Korea is divided into 13 regions from I a to IIIC, into detail, 41 regions from I no to IIICl.

• 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.32 no.4
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• pp.353-365
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• 2022

This paper evaluates precipitation forecast skill of Global/Regional Integrated Model system (GRIMs) over South Korea in a boreal winter from December 2013 to February 2014. Three types of precipitation are classified based on development mechanism: 1) convection type (C type), 2) low pressure type (L type), and 3) orographic type (O type), in which their frequencies are 44.4%, 25.0%, and 30.6%, respectively. It appears that the model significantly overestimates precipitation occurrence (0.1 mm d^-1) for all types of winter precipitation. Objective measured skill scores of GRIMs are comparably high for L type and O type. Except for precipitation occurrence, the model shows high predictability for L type precipitation with the most unbiased prediction. It is noted that Equitable Threat Score (ETS) is inappropriate for measuring rare events due to its high dependency on the sample size, as in the case of Critical Success Index as well. The Symmetric Extreme Dependency Score (SEDS) demonstrates less sensitivity on the number of samples. Thus, SEDS is used for the evaluation of prediction skill to supplement the limit of ETS. The evaluation via SEDS shows that the prediction skill score for L type is the highest in the range of 5.0, 10.0 mm d^-1 and the score for O type is the highest in the range of 1.0, 20.0 mm d^-1. C type has the lowest scores in overall range. The difference in precipitation forecast skill by precipitation type can be explained by the spatial distribution and intensity of precipitation in each representative case.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.334-334
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• 2022

Improvement of old-fashioned rain gauge systems for automatic, timely, continuous, and accurate precipitation observation is highly essential for weather/climate prediction and natural hazards early warning, since the occurrence frequency and intensity of heavy and extreme precipitation events (especially floods) are recently getting more increase and severe worldwide due to climate change. Although rain gauge accuracy of 0.1 mm is recommended by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the traditional rain gauges in both weighting and tipping bucket types are often unable to meet that demand due to several existing technical limitations together with higher production and maintenance costs. Therefore, we aim to introduce a newly developed and cost-effective hybrid rain gauge system at 0.1 mm accuracy that combines advantages of weighting and tipping bucket types for continuous, automatic, and accurate precipitation observation, where the errors from long-term load cells and external environmental sources (e.g., winds) can be removed via an automatic drainage system and artificial intelligence-based data quality control procedure. Our rain gauge system consists of an instrument unit for measuring precipitation, a communication unit for transmitting and receiving measured precipitation signals, and a database unit for storing, processing, and analyzing precipitation data. This newly developed rain gauge was designed according to the weather instrument criteria, where precipitation amounts filled into the tipping bucket are measured considering the receiver's diameter, the maximum measurement of precipitation, drainage time, and the conductivity marking. Moreover, it is also designed to transmit the measured precipitation data stored in the PCB through RS232, RS485, and TCP/IP, together with connecting to the data logger to enable data collection and analysis based on user needs. Preliminary results from a comparison with an existing 1.0-mm tipping bucket rain gauge indicated that our developed rain gauge has an excellent performance in continuous precipitation observation with higher measurement accuracy, more correct precipitation days observed (120 days), and a lower error of roughly 27 mm occurred during the measurement period.

• Atmosphere
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.151-158
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• 2014

This study investigated a method for the discrimination of precipitation type using thickness of geopotential height at 1000~850 hPa and improved Matsuo's scheme over South Korea using 7 upper-level observations data during winter time from 2003 to 2008. With this research, it was suggested that thickness between snow and rain should range from 1281 to 1297 gpm at 1000~850 hPa. This threshold was suitable for determining precipitation type such as snow, sleet and rain and it was verified by investigation at 7 upper-level observation and 10 surface observation data for 3 years (2009~2011). In addition, precipitation types were separated properly by Matsuo's scheme and its improved one, which is a fuction of surface air temperature and relative humidity, when they lie in mixed sectors. Precipitation types in the mixed sector were subdivided into 5 sectors (rain, rain and snow, snow and rain, snow, and snow cover). We also present the decision table for monitoring and predicting precipitation types using model output of Korea Local Analysis and Prediction System (KLAPS) and observation data.

• Atmosphere
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.33-48
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• 2006

A classification of snowfall type based on development mechanism is proposed using previous snowfall studies, operational experiences, etc. Five types are proposed: snowfall caused by 1) airmass transformation (AT type), 2) terrain effects in a situation of expanding Siberian High (TE type), 3) precipitation systems associated with extratropical cyclones (EC type), 4) indirect effects of extratropical cyclones passing over the sea to the south of the Korean peninsula (ECS type), and 5) combined effects of TE and ECS types (COM type). Snowfall events during 1981-2001 are classified according to the 5 types mentioned above. For this, 118 events, with at least one station with daily snowfall depth greater than 20 cm, are selected. For the classification, synoptic weather charts, satellite images, and precipitation data are used. For TE and COM types, local sea-level pressure chart is also used to confirm the presence of condition for TE type (this is done for events in 1990 and thereafter). The classification shows that 109 out of 118 events can be classified as one of the 5 types. In the remaining 8 events, heavy snowfall occurred only in Ullung Island. Its occurrence may be due to one or more of the following mechanism: airmass transformation, mesoscale cyclones and/or mesoscale convergence over the East Sea, etc. Each type shows different characteristics in location of snowfall and composition of precipitation (i.e., dry snow, rain, and mixed precipitation). The AT-type snowfall occurs mostly in the west coast, Jeju and Ullung Islands whereas the TE-type snowfall occurs in the East coast especially over the Young Dong area. The ECS-type snowfall occurs mostly over the southern part of the peninsula and some east cost area (sometimes, whole south Korea depending on the location of cyclones). The EC- and COM-type snowfalls occur in wider area, often whole south Korea. Precipitation composition also varies with the type. The AT-type has a snow ratio (SR) higher than the mean value. The TE- and EC-type have SR similar to the mean. The ECS- and COM-type have SR values smaller than the mean. Generally the SR values at high latitude and mountainous areas are higher than those at the other areas. The SR value informs the characteristics of the precipitation composition. An SR value larger than 10 means that all precipitation is composed of snow whereas a zero SR value means that all precipitation is composed of rain.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.64 no.9
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• pp.1337-1346
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• 2015

In this paper, pattern classifier is designed to classify precipitation and non-precipitation events from weather radar data. The proposed classifier is based on Fuzzy Neural Network(FNN) and consists of three FNNs which operate in parallel. In the proposed network, the connection weights of the consequent part of fuzzy rules are expressed as two polynomial types such as constant or linear polynomial function, and their coefficients are learned by using Least Square Estimation(LSE). In addition, parametric as well as structural factors of the proposed classifier are optimized through Differential Evolution(DE) algorithm. After event classification between precipitation and non-precipitation echo, non-precipitation event is to get rid of all echo, while precipitation event including non-precipitation echo is to get rid of non-precipitation echo by classifier that is also based on Fuzzy Neural Network. Weather radar data obtained from meteorological office is to analysis and discuss performance of the proposed event and echo patter classifier, result of echo pattern classifier compare to QC(Quality Control) data obtained from meteorological office.

• Atmosphere
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.433-444
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• 2014

Although the Radar-AWS Rainrate (RAR) calculation system operated by Korea Meteorological Administration estimated precipitation using 2-dimensional composite components of single polarization radars, this system has several limitations in estimating the precipitation accurately. To to overcome limitations of the RAR system, the Korea Meteorological Administration developed and operated the RMQ (Radar-based Multi-sensor Quantitative Precipitation Estimation) system, the improved version of NMQ (National Mosaic and Multi-sensor Quantitative Precipitation Estimation) system of NSSL (National Severe Storms Laboratory) for the Korean Peninsula. This study introduced the RMQ system domestically for the first time and verified the precipitation estimation performance of the RMQ system. The RMQ system consists of 4 main parts as the process of handling the single radar data, merging 3D reflectivity, QPE, and displaying result images. The first process (handling of the single radar data) has the pre-process of a radar data (transformation of data format and quality control), the production of a vertical profile of reflectivity and the correction of bright-band, and the conduction of hydrid scan reflectivity. The next process (merger of 3D reflectivity) produces the 3D composite reflectivity field after correcting the quality controlled single radar reflectivity. The QPE process classifies the precipitation types using multi-sensor information and estimates quantitative precipitation using several Z-R relationships which are proper for precipitation types. This process also corrects the precipitation using the AWS position with local gauge correction technique. The last process displays the final results transformed into images in the web-site. This study also estimated the accuracy of the RMQ system with five events in 2012 summer season and compared the results of the RAR (Radar-AWS Rainrate) and RMQ systems. The RMQ system ($2.36mm\;hr^{-1}$ in RMSE on average) is superior to the RAR system ($8.33mm\;hr^{-1}$ in RMSE) and improved by 73.25% in RMSE and 25.56% in correlation coefficient on average. The precipitation composite field images produced by the RMQ system are almost identical to the AWS (Automatic Weather Statioin) images. Therefore, the RMQ system has contributed to improve the accuracy of precipitation estimation using weather radars and operation of the RMQ system in the work field in future enables to cope with the extreme weather conditions actively.