• Atmosphere
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.67-83
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• 2015

Predicting the location and intensity of precipitation still remains a main issue in numerical weather prediction (NWP). Resolution is a very important component of precipitation forecasts in NWP. Compared with a lower resolution model, a higher resolution model can predict small scale (i.e., storm scale) precipitation and depict convection structures more precisely. In addition, an ensemble technique can be used to improve the precipitation forecast because it can estimate uncertainties associated with forecasts. Therefore, NWP using both a higher resolution model and ensemble technique is expected to represent inherent uncertainties of convective scale motion better and lead to improved forecasts. In this study, the limited area ensemble prediction system for the convective-scale (i.e., high resolution) operational Unified Model (UM) in Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) was developed and evaluated for the ensemble forecasts during August 2012. The model domain covers the limited area over the Korean Peninsula. The high resolution limited area ensemble prediction system developed showed good skill in predicting precipitation, wind, and temperature at the surface as well as meteorological variables at 500 and 850 hPa. To investigate which combination of horizontal resolution and ensemble member is most skillful, the system was run with three different horizontal resolutions (1.5, 2, and 3 km) and ensemble members (8, 12, and 16), and the forecasts from the experiments were evaluated. To assess the quantitative precipitation forecast (QPF) skill of the system, the precipitation forecasts for two heavy rainfall cases during the study period were analyzed using the Fractions Skill Score (FSS) and Probability Matching (PM) method. The PM method was effective in representing the intensity of precipitation and the FSS was effective in verifying the precipitation forecast for the high resolution limited area ensemble prediction system in KMA.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.623-637
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• 2018

This study investigates the effects of horizontal resolution, cumulus parameterization scheme (CPS), and probability forecasting on precipitation forecasts over the Korean Peninsula from 00 UTC 15 August to 12 UTC 14 September 2013, using the limited-area ensemble prediction system (LEPS) of the Korea Meteorological Administration. To investigate the effect of resolution, the control members of the LEPS with 1.5- and 3-km resolution were compared. Two 3-km experiments with and without the CPS were conducted for the control member, because a 3-km resolution lies within the gray zone. For probability forecasting, 12 ensemble members with 3-km resolution were run using the LEPS. The forecast performance was evaluated for both the whole study period and precipitation cases categorized by synoptic forcing. The performance of precipitation forecasts using the 1.5-km resolution was better than that using the 3-km resolution for both the total period and individual cases. The result of the 3-km resolution experiment with the CPS did not differ significantly from that without it. The 3-km ensemble mean and probability matching (PM) performed better than the 3-km control member, regardless of the use of the CPS. The PM complemented the defect of the ensemble mean, which better predicts precipitation regions but underestimates precipitation amount by averaging ensembles, compared to the control member. Further, both the 3-km ensemble mean and PM outperformed the 1.5-km control member, which implies that the lower performance of the 3-km control member compared to the 1.5-km control member was complemented by probability forecasting.

• Atmosphere
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.185-198
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• 2021

In this study, we examined a spatial downscaling method based on Gradient and Inverse Distance Squared (GIDS) weighting to produce high-resolution grid data from a numerical weather prediction model over Korean Peninsula with complex terrain. The GIDS is a simple and effective geostatistical downscaling method using horizontal distance gradients and an elevation. The predicted meteorological variables (e.g., temperature and 3-hr accumulated rainfall amount) from the Limited-area ENsemble prediction System (LENS; horizontal grid spacing of 3 km) are used for the GIDS to produce a higher horizontal resolution (1.5 km) data set. The obtained results were compared to those from the bilinear interpolation. The GIDS effectively produced high-resolution gridded data for temperature with the continuous spatial distribution and high dependence on topography. The results showed a better agreement with the observation by increasing a searching radius from 10 to 30 km. However, the GIDS showed relatively lower performance for the precipitation variable. Although the GIDS has a significant efficiency in producing a higher resolution gridded temperature data, it requires further study to be applied for rainfall events.