• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.201-211
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• 2008

According to IPCC fourth assessment report in 2007, global mean temperatures have risen by 0.74 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years. Moreover, in the recent 25 years, global mean temperatures have risen by 0.45 degrees Celsius, which is 2.4-times larger than those in the past 100 years. The evidences for climate change, such as sea level rise, arctic glacier melt, and desertification in Asia, have occurred and increased over the globe. In Korea, because regional climate has been changed, types of agriculture and fishery should be replaced. And as precipitation pattern behave differently from the past decades, water management would be more difficult, furthermore, atmospheric environment, related to concentrations for ozone, sulfate, etc., could be worse. Nevertheless, we have only focused on greenhouse gas reduction duty for the Convention of Climate Change. Fortunately, in the fourth plan on climate change, we have planned to manage climate change more actively since 2007. In Korea, the emission of carbon dioxide has increased about 1.9-times more, from 311million ton in 1990 to 591million ton in 2004. And also about 2 ppm rise every year for concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As a result, ecosystem, quality of water and atmosphere would be affected. Here, the emission of greenhouse gases over the globe is examined, and the effect of greenhouse gases for climate change is reviewed from the results of previous studies. In addition, the countermeasures of mitigation and adaptation on climate change were discussed for the understanding.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.212-219
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• 2014

In this study, a land pollutant load calculation method in TMDLs was improved to consider climate change scenarios. In order to evaluate the new method, future change in rainfall patterns was predicted by using SRES A1B climate change scenarios and then post-processing methods such as change factor (CF) and quantile mapping (QM) were applied to correct the bias between the predicted and the observed rainfall patterns. Also, future land pollutant loads were estimated by using both the bias corrected rainfall patterns and the enhanced method. For the results of bias correction, both methods (CF and QM) predicted the temporal trend of the past rainfall patterns and QM method showed future daily average precipitation in the range of 1.1~7.5 mm and CF showed it in the range of 1.3~6.8 mm from 2014 to 2100. Also, in the result of the estimation of future land pollutant loads using the enhanced method (2020, 2040, 2100), TN loads were in the range of 4316.6~6138.6 kg/day and TP loads were in the range of 457.0~716.5 kg/day. However, each result of TN and TP loads in 2020, 2040, 2100 was the same with the original method. The enhanced method in this study will be useful to predict land pollutant loads under the influence of climate change because it can reflect future change in rainfall patterns. Also, it is expected that the results of this study are used as a base data of TMDLs in case of applying for climate change scenarios.

• 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.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.117-129
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• 2021

In this review, we aimed to synthesize the current knowledge on the observed and projected effects of climate change on the ecosystems of Korea (i.e., the Republic of Korea (ROK) or South Korea), as well as the main causes of vulnerability and options for adaptation in these ecosystems based on a range of ecological and biogeographical data. To this end, we compiled a set of peer-reviewed papers published since 2014. We found that publication of climate-related studies on plants has decreased in the field of plant phenology and physiology, whereas such publication has rapidly increased in plant and animal community ecology, reflecting the range shifts and abundance change that are occurring under climate change. Plant phenology studies showed that climate change has increased growing seasons by advancing the timing of flowering and budburst while delaying the timing of leafing out. Community ecology studies indicated that the future ranges of cold-adapted plants and animals could shrink or shift toward northern and high-elevation areas, whereas the ranges of warm-adapted organisms could expand and/or shift toward the areas that the aforementioned cold-adapted biota previously occupied. This review provides useful information and new insights that will improve understanding of climate change effects on the ecosystems of Korea. Moreover, it will serve as a reference for policy-makers seeking to establish future sectoral adaptation options for protection against climate change.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.240-246
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• 2017

Objectives: This study was conducted to evaluate the vulnerability of the human health sector to $PM_{10}$ due to climate change in Incheon over the period of 2005-2014. Methods: Vulnerability to $PM_{10}$ consists of the three categories of climate exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. The indexes for climate exposure and sensitivity indicate positive effects, while adaptive capacity shows a negative effect on vulnerability to $PM_{10}$. The variables in each category were standardized by the rescaling method, and respective relative regional vulnerability was analyzed through the vulnerability index calculation formula of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Results: Regions with a high exposure index were the western and northern urban areas with industrial complexes adjacent to a highway, including Bupyong-gu and Seo-gu. Major factors determining the climate exposure index were the $PM_{10}$ concentration, days of $PM_{10}$ >= $100{\mu}g/m^3$, and $PM_{10}$ emissions. The regions showing a high sensitivity index were urban regions with high populations; these commonly had a high mortality rate for related diseases and vulnerable populations. Conclusions: This study is able to support regionally adjusted adaptation policies and the quantitative background of policy priority since it provides information on the regional health vulnerability to $PM_{10}$ due to climate change in Incheon.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.6B
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• pp.561-569
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• 2010

In this study, the impact of climate change on extreme drought events is investigated by comparing drought severity-area-duration curves under present and future climate. The depth-area-duration analysis for characterizing an extreme precipitation event provides a basis for analysing drought events when storm depth is replaced by an appropriate measure of drought severity. In our climate-change impact experiments, the future monthly precipitation time series is based on a KMA regional climate model which has a $27km{\times}27km$ spatial resolution, and the drought severity is computed using the standardized precipitation index. As a result, agricultural drought risk is likely to increase especially in short duration, while hydrologic drought risk will greatly increase in all durations. Such results indicate that a climate change vulnerability assessment for present water resources supply system is urgent.

• Atmosphere
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.347-356
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• 2013

The climate projection with a high spatial resolution is required for the studies on regional climate changes. The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) has provided downscaled RCP (Representative Concentration Pathway) scenarios over Korea with 1 km spatial resolution. If there are additional climate projections produced by dynamically downscale, the quality of impacts and vulnerability assessments of Korea would be improved with uncertainty information. This technical note intends to instruct the methods to downscale the climate projections dynamically from the Community Earth System Model (CESM) to the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model. In particular, here we focus on the instruction to utilize CAM2WRF, a sub-program to link output of CESM to initial and boundary condition of WRF at Linux platform. We also provide the example of the dynamically downscaled results over Korean Peninsula with 50 km spatial resolution for August, 2020. This instruction can be helpful to utilize global scale climate scenarios for studying regional climate change over Korean peninsula with further validation and uncertainty/bias analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.110-119
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• 2007

This study's objects are to predict distribution and to assess vulnerability of sub-alpine vegetations in the Korean peninsula for climate change using various climate models. This study validates relationship between sub-alpine vegetations and environmental factors using Pearson correlation analysis. Then, the future distribution of sub-alpine vegetations are predicted by a logistic regression. The major findings in this study are; First, spring mean temperature (March-May), total precipitation, elevation and warmth index are highly influencing factors to the distribution of sub-alpine vegetations. Second, the sub-alpine vegetations will be disappeared in South Korea and concentrated around Baekdu Mountain in North Korea. North Korea is predicted to have serious impact of climate change because temperature will be increased higher than in South Korea. The study findings concluded that the assessment of the future vulnerability of sub-alpine vegetations to climate change are significant.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.49-57
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• 2016

Even if an external forcing that will drive a climate change is given uniformly over the globe, the corresponding climate change and the feedbacks by the climate system differ by region. Thus the detection of global warming signal has been made on a regional scale as well as on a global average against the internal variabilities and other noises involved in the climate change. The purpose of this study is to estimate a timing of unprecedented climate due to global warming and to analyze the regional differences in the estimated results. For this purpose, unlike previous studies that used climate simulation data, we used an observational dataset to estimate a magnitude of internal variability and a future temperature change. We calculated a linear trend in surface temperature using a historical temperature record from 1880 to 2014 and a magnitude of internal variability as the largest temperature displacement from the linear trend. A timing of unprecedented climate was defined as the first year when a predicted minimum temperature exceeds the maximum temperature record in a historical data and remains as such since then. Presumed that the linear trend and the maximum displacement will be maintained in the future, an unprecedented climate over the land would come within 200 years from now in the western area of Africa, the low latitudes including India and the southern part of Arabian Peninsula in Eurasia, the high latitudes including Greenland and the mid-western part of Canada in North America, the low latitudes including Amazon in South America, the areas surrounding the Ross Sea in Antarctica, and parts of East Asia including Korean Peninsula. On the other hand, an unprecedented climate would come later after 400 years in the high latitudes of Eurasia including the northern Europe, the middle and southern parts of North America including the U.S.A. and Mexico. For the ocean, an unprecedented climate would come within 200 years over the Indian Ocean, the middle latitudes of the North Atlantic and the South Atlantic, parts of the Southern Ocean, the Antarctic Ross Sea, and parts of the Arctic Sea. In the meantime, an unprecedented climate would come even after thousands of years over some other regions of ocean including the eastern tropical Pacific and the North Pacific middle latitudes where an internal variability is large. In summary, spatial pattern in timing of unprecedented climate are different for each continent. For the ocean, it is highly affected by large internal variability except for the high-latitude regions with a significant warming trend. As such, a timing of an unprecedented climate would not be uniform over the globe but considerably different by region. Our results suggest that it is necessary to consider an internal variability as well as a regional warming rate when planning a climate change mitigation and adaption policy.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.71-79
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• 2014

Climate change has been social and environmental issues, it typically indicates the trend changes of not only temperature but also rainfall. There is a need to consider climate changes in a long-term soil erosion estimation since soil loss in a watershed can be varied by the changes of rainfall intensity and frequency of torrential rainfall. The impacts of rainfall trend changes on soil loss, one of climate changes, were estimated using Sediment Assessment Tool for Effective Erosion Control (SATEEC) employing L module with current climate scenario and future climate scenario collected from the Korea Meteorological Administration. A 62 $km^2$ watershed was selected to explore the climate changes on soil loss. SATEEC provided an increasing trend of soil loss with the climate change scenarios, which were 182 ton/ha/year in 2010s, 169 ton/ha/year in 2020s, 192 ton/ha/year in 2030s,182 ton/ha/year in 2040s, and 218 ton/ha/year in 2050s. Moreover, it was found that approximately 90% of agricultural area in the watershed displayed the soil loss of 50 ton/ha/year which is exceeding the allow able soil loss regulation by the Ministry of Environment.