• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.239-247
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• 2011

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the corresponding national low-carbon policy should be grounded on the scientific understanding of climate sensitivity to the increase in CO2 concentration. This is, however, precluded by the fact that current estimates of the climate sensitivity highly vary. To understand the scientific background, limitations, and prospects of the climate sensitivity study, this paper reviews, as objectively as possible, the most recent results on the sensitivity issue. Theoretically, the climate sensitivity hinges on climate feedbacks from various atmospheric and surface physical processes. Especially cloud and sea-ice processes associated with shortwave radiation are known to have largest uncertainty, resulting in an inaccurate estimation of climate sensitivity. For this reason, recent observational studies using satellite data suggest sensitivity lower than or similar to those estimated by climate models (2-5 K per doubled CO2).

• Atmosphere
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.185-196
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• 2011

The performance assessment in radiosonde observation on the special observation program (ProbeX-2009) is performed and the characteristics of precipitation using Auto Weather System (AWS) and radiosonde data in 2009 at the Ulleungdo are investigated. The launching time, observation time, and maximum altitude of radiosonde are satisfied with the regulation from Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) but the duration of observational time of radiosonde is much shorter than that of the ProbeX-2007 because the altitude of launching site is higher than others in 2007. From the analysis of trajectories of radiosonde, most radiosondes at the Ulleungdo tend to move into the east because the westerly prevail at the middle latitude. However, when the Okhotsk high is expanded to the Korean peninsula and the north-westerly winds strengthen over the East Sea as the subtropical high is retreated, radiosonde tends to move into the south-west and south-east, respectively. Maximum distance appears at the end of observation level before May but the level of maximum distance is changed into 100 hPa after June because the prevailing wind direction is reversed from westerly to easterly at the stratosphere during summer time. The condition of precipitation was more correlated with the dynamic instability except Changma season. Precipitation in 2009 at the Ulleungdo occurred under the marine climate so that total precipitation amounts and precipitation intensity were increased and intensified during nighttime. The local environment favorable for the precipitation during nighttime was while the wind speed at the surface and the inflow from the shoreline were strengthened. Precipitation events also affected by synoptic condition but the localized effect induced by topography was more strengthened at the northern part of Ulleungdo.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.221-235
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• 2011

This study summarizes previous studies on the climate change over Korea. Several studies on climate change in the neighboring countries as well as the entire globe are reviewed. Temperature data obtained from modern observational system show an increasing trend beyond the natural variations. The increasing rate of sea surface temperature (SST) over the ocean basins surrounding Korea is higher than that of the global-mean SST. The large increase in the SST over the oceans surrounding Korea may enhance tropical cyclone activity and heavy rainfall frequency in Korea. In addition, it has been reported that the changes in large scale circulation associated with global climate change influence the spatio-temporal variation of monsoon including Changma in summer and cold surges in winter. Although all researches on the subject were not fully discussed in this study due to short period of preparation, allowed pages, and authors' limited knowledge, we expect that this summarized reviews would be helpful to understand climate changes over Korea and the surrounding regions.

• Atmosphere
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.457-467
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• 2018

This study investigated the variability of spring (March-May) forest fire risk in Korea for the period 1991~2017 and analyzed its relationship with large-scale climate factors. The Forest Weather Index (FWI) representing the meteorological risk for forest fire occurrences calculated based on observational data and its relationship with large-scale climate factors were analyzed. We performed the empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis on the spring FWI. The leading EOF mode of FWI accounting for about 70% of total variability was found to be highly correlated with total number of forest fire occurrences in Korea. The high FWI, forest fire occurrence risk, in Korea, is associated with warmer atmosphere temperature in midwest Eurasia-China-Korea peninsula, cyclonic circulation anomaly in northeastern China-Korea peninsula-northwest pacific, westerly wind anomaly in central China-Korea peninsula, and low humidity in Korea. These are further related with warmer sea surface temperature and enhanced outgoing longwave radiation over Western Pacific, which represents a typical condition for a La $Ni\tilde{n}a$ episode. This suggests that large-scale climate factors over East Asia and ENSO could have a significant influence on the occurrence of spring forest fires in Korea.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.205-217
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• 2021

A shallow channel between Jeju and Udo Islands, which is located in the northeastern Jeju Island, is influenced by storm- or typhoon-induced currents and surface waves as well as strong tidal currents. This study examines the typhoon-induced current and wave patterns in the channel, using Acoustic Doppler Current Meter (ADCP) measurements and an ocean-wave coupled modeling experiment. Three typhoons were chosen - Chaba (2016), Soulik (2018), and Lingling (2019) - to investigate the responses of currents and waves in their pathways. During the pre-typhoon periods, dominant northward flow and wave propagation were observed in the channel due to the southeasterly winds before the three typhoons. After the passage of Chaba, which passed over the eastern side of Jeju Island, the northward flow and wave propagation were totally reversed to the opposite direction, which was attributed to the strong northerly winds on the left side of the typhoon. In contrast, in the cases of Soulik and Lingling, which passed over the western side of Jeju Island, strong southerly winds on the right side of the typhoons continuously intensified the northward current and wave propagation in the channel. The model-simulated current and wave fields reasonably coincided with observational data, showing southward/northward flow and wave propagation in response to the right/left side of the typhoon pathways. Typhoon-induced downwind flows, and surface waves could enhance up to 2m/s and 3m due to the strong winds that lasted for more than 12 hours. This suggests that the flow and wave patterns in the Udo channel are highly sensitive to the pathway of typhoons and accompanying winds; thus, this may be a crucial factor with regard to the movement of seabed sediments and subsequent coastal erosion.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.135-145
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• 2019

Analysis of a long cycle or a trend of time series data based on a long-term observation would require comparability between data observed in the past and the present. In the present study, we proposed an approach to ensure the compatibility among the instruments used for the long-term observation, which would allow to secure continuity of the data. An open-path gas analyzer (Model LI-7500, LI-COR, Inc., USA) has been used for eddy covariance flux measurement in the Gwangneung deciduous forest for more than 10 years. The open-path gas analyzer was replaced by an enclosed-path gas analyzer (Model EC155, Campbell Scientific, Inc., USA) in July 2015. Before completely replacing the gas analyzer, the carbon dioxide ($CO_2$) and latent heat fluxes were collected using both gas analyzers simultaneously during a five-month period from August to December in 2015. It was found that the $CO_2$ fluxes were not significantly different between the gas analyzers under the condition that the daily mean temperature was higher than $0^{\circ}C$. However, the $CO_2$ flux measured by the open-path gas analyzer was negatively biased (from positive sign, i.e., carbon source, to 0 or negative sign, i.e., carbon neutral or sink) due to the instrument surface heating under the condition that the daily mean temperature was lower than $0^{\circ}C$. Despite applying the frequency response correction associated with tube attenuation of water vapor, the latent heat flux measured by the enclosed-path gas analyzer was on average 9% smaller than that measured by the open-path gas analyzer, which resulted in >20% difference of the sums over the study period. These results indicated that application of the additional air density correction would be needed due to the instrument heat and analysis of the long-term observational flux data would be facilitated by understanding the underestimation tendency of latent heat flux measurements by an enclosed-path gas analyzer.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.266-280
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• 1994

Upper-air synoptic data and surface weather elements such as temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, cloud and precipitation were analyzed in some detail to determine the characteristics of Nopsae, a foehn-like surface wind over the Youngsuh region of Central Korea. NOAA AVHRR and GMS images are also referenced to identify the distribution of clouds and precipitation to classify the tpyes of foehn over the study area. The data period examined is from 1982 until 1993 of spring and summer months from March through August. Results of the anaylsis are as follows. Warm and dry air penetration over the Younesuh region has experienced on foehn days occured between March 21 and August 10 during study perion. The mean annual number of foehn the days were 28. Foehn phenomena were prominent during March 21-25, April 5-15, May 25-June 10, and June 26-30 pentads. The intensity of the phenomena can be evaluated as the difference of daily maximum temperature and relative humidity between windward sites and leeward sites. The intensity of daily maximum temperature reached 14.5$^{\circ}C$, but most values were in the range of 5.0-7.5$^{\circ}C$ (61%). Although strong intensity of foehns usually develop in June, it is common that farmers in the region experince more aridity during the foehnday of April and May due to the transplantation of rice seedlings. Long-run foehn are not common phenomena and 55% of foehn terminate in one day, but there is a record that Nopsae persisted up to 9 days continuously. The author identified using the cloud and precipitation data out of NOAA-11, AVHRR and GMS images is that one of them has no precipitation over windward side. The available data and the results of the analysis are somewhat inadequate. Since the results imply that wave phenomenon is potentially important in terms of local surface weather and vertical momentum transport, more detailed theoretical and observational studies are necessary to clarify the mechanism and the impacts of Nopsae.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.185-195
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• 2009

We investigated the change of several meteorological variables due to deforestation. We established two sets of automatic weather observation system: one on a hill where forest was destructed by lumbering (Point 1) and the other in a neighboring district (Point 2) of fairly preserved forest. The observations were continued for one year (2006. 12-2007. 12). In this study, we analysed the data observed for one week from the nea day after summertime rainfall. The results showed that the air temperatures of Point 1 were about $1.5^{\circ}C$ higher than those of Point 2 during the daytime. But there were small gaps between the two poults during the nighttime. The relative humidities also differed greatly between the two during the daytime. It was as high as about 10% at Point 2. The surface and underground (15 cm in depth) soil temperatures were also fealty different between the two points during the daytime. They were $3-10^{\circ}C$ higher at Point 2 than those of Point 1. And the gaps reduced drastically during the nighttime. The averaged soil moistures were 7.1% at Point 1 and 19.5% at Point 2 during the observation period, respectively. The differences of wind direction were small, but the wind speeds differed between the two points. The observed wind speeds during the observation period were roughly estimated to be about 0.5m/s at Point 1 and 0.3m/s at Point 2. The heat budget analysis was also performed based on the observation data.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.24-34
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• 2017

The westerly waves generation is described in the advanced earth science textbook used at high school as follows: as westerly wind approaches and blows over large mountains, the air flow shows wave motions in downwind side, which can be explained by the conservation of potential vorticity. However, there has been no case study showing the phenomena of the mesoscale westerly waves with observational data in the area of small mountains in Korea. And thus the wind speed and time persistency of westerly winds along with the width and length of mountains have never been studied to explain the generation of the westerly waves. As a first step, we assured the westerly waves generated in the downwind side of Sobaek mountains based on surface station wind data nearby. Furthermore, the critical or minimum wind velocity of the westerly wind over Sobaek mountains to generate the downwind wave were derived and calcuated tobe about $0.6m\;s^{-1}$ for Sobaek mountains, which means that the westerly waves could be generated in most cases of westerly blowing over the mountains. Using surface station data and 4-dimensional assimilation data of RDAPS (Regional Data Assimilation and Prediction System) provided by Korea Meteorological Agency, we also analyzed cases of westerly waves occurrence and life cycle in the downwind side of Sobaek mountains for a year of 2014. The westerly waves occurred in meso-${\beta}$ or -${\gamma}$ scales. The westerly waves generated by the mountains disappeared gradually with wind speed decreasing. The occurrence frequency of the vorticity with meso-${\beta}$ scale got to be higher when the stronger westerly wind blew. When we extended the spatial range of the analysis, phenomena of westerly waves were also observed in the downwind side of Yensan mountains in Northeastern China. Our current work will be a study material to help students understand the atmospheric phenomena perturbed by mountains.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.584-598
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• 2019

In this study, the effects of air-sea interactions on precipitation over the Seoul-Gyeonggi region of the Korean Peninsula from 28 to 30 August 2018, were analyzed using a Regional atmosphere-ocean Coupled Model (RCM). In the RCM, a WRF (Weather Research Forecasts) was used as the atmosphere model whereas ROMS (Regional Oceanic Modeling System) was used as the ocean model. In a Regional Single atmosphere Model (RSM), only the WRF model was used. In addition, the sea surface temperature data of ECMWF Reanalysis Interim was used as low boundary data. Compared with the observational data, the RCM considering the effect of air-sea interaction represented that the spatial correlations were 0.6 and 0.84, respectively, for the precipitation and the Yellow Sea surface temperature in the Seoul-Gyeonggi area, which was higher than the RSM. whereas the mean bias error (MBE) was -2.32 and -0.62, respectively, which was lower than the RSM. The air-sea interaction effect, analyzed by equivalent potential temperature, SST, dynamic convergence fields, induced the change of SST in the Yellow Sea. In addition, the changed SST caused the difference in thermal instability and kinematic convergence in the lower atmosphere. The thermal instability and convergence over the Seoul-Gyeonggi region induced upward motion, and consequently, the precipitation in the RCM was similar to the spatial distribution of the observed data compared to the precipitation in the RSM. Although various case studies and climatic analyses are needed to clearly understand the effects of complex air-sea interaction, this study results provide evidence for the importance of the air-sea interaction in predicting precipitation in the Seoul-Gyeonggi region.