• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.555-566
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• 2009

Precipitable water vapor (PWV) derived from a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model were compared to observations derived from ground-based Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. The model data compared were from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model short-range forecasts on nested grids. The numerical experimets were performed by selecting the cloud microphysics schemes and for the comparisons, the Changma period of 2008 was selected. The observational data were derived from GPS measurements at 9-sites in South Korea over a 1-month period, in the middle of June-July 2008. In general, the WRF model demonstrated considerable skill in reproducing the temporal and spatial evolution of the PWV as depicted by the GPS estimations. The correlation between forecasts and GPS estimates of PWV depreciated slowly with increasing forecast times. Comparing simulations with a resolution of 18 km and 6 km showed no obvious PWV dependence on resolution. Besides, GPS and the model PWV data were found to be in quite good agreement with data derived from radiosondes. These results indicated that the GPS-derived PWV data, with high temporal and spatial resolution, are very useful for meteorological applications.

• Atmosphere
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.277-288
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• 2016

Polar lows are intense mesoscale cyclones that mainly occur over the sea in polar regions. Owing to their small spatial scale of a diameter less than 1000 km, simulating polar lows is a challenging task. At King Sejong station in West Antartica, polar lows are often observed. Despite the recent significant climatic changes observed over West Antarctica, adequate validation of regional simulations of extreme weather events such as polar lows are rare for this region. To address this gap, simulation results from a recent version of the Polar Weather Research and Forecasting model (Polar WRF) covering Antartic Peninsula at a high horizontal resolution of 3 km are validated against near-surface meteorological observations. We selected a case of high wind speed event on 7 January 2013 recorded at Automatic Meteorological Observation Station (AMOS) in King Sejong station, Antarctica. It is revealed by in situ observations, numerical weather prediction, and reanalysis fields that the synoptic and mesoscale environment of the strong wind event was due to the passage of a strong mesoscale polar low of center pressure 950 hPa. Verifying model results from 3 km grid resolution simulation against AMOS observation showed that high skill in simulating wind speed and surface pressure with a bias of $-1.1m\;s^{-1}$ and -1.2 hPa, respectively. Our evaluation suggests that the Polar WRF can be used as a useful dynamic downscaling tool for the simulation of Antartic weather systems and the near-surface meteorological instruments installed in King Sejong station can provide invaluable data for polar low studies over West Antartica.

• Atmosphere
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.299-316
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• 2008

The intensive upper-air observation network was organized over southwestern region of the Korean Peninsula during the Korea Enhanced Observing Program in 2005 (KEOP-2005). In order to examine the effect of additional upper-air observation on the numerical weather forecasting, three Observing System Experiments (OSEs) using Korea Local Analysis and Prediction System (KLAPS) and Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with KEOP-2005 data are conducted. Cold start case with KEOP-2005 data presents a remarkable predictability difference with only conventional observation data in the downstream and along the Changma front area. The sensitivity of the predictability tends to decrease under the stable atmosphere. Our results indicates that the effect of intensive observation plays a role in the forecasting of the sensitive area in the numerical model, especially under the unstable atmospheric conditions. When the intensive upper-air observation data (KEOP-2005 data) are included in the OSEs, the predictability of precipitation is partially improved. Especially, when KEOP-2005 data are assimilated at 6-hour interval, the predictability on the heavy rainfall showing higher Critical Success Index (CSI) is highly improved. Therefore it is found that KEOP-2005 data play an important role in improving the position and intensity of the simulated precipitation system.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.164-178
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• 2022

Uncertainties in weather forecasts would affect the reliability of yield prediction using crop models. The objective of this study was to compare uncertainty in crop yield prediction caused by the use of the weather forecast data. Daily weather data were produced at 10 km spatial resolution using W eather Research and Forecasting (W RF) model. The nearest neighbor method was used to downscale these data at the resolution of 5 km (W RF5K). Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) was also applied to the WRF data to produce the weather data at the same resolution. W RF5K and PRISM data were used as inputs to the CROPGRO-SOYBEAN model to predict crop yield. The uncertainties of the gridded data were analyzed using cumulative growing degree days (CGDD) and cumulative solar radiation (CSRAD) during the soybean growing seasons for the crop of interest. The degree of agreement (DOA) statistics including structural similarity index were determined for the crop model outputs. Our results indicated that the DOA statistics for CGDD were correlated with that for the maturity dates predicted using WRF5K and PRISM data. Yield forecasts had small values of the DOA statistics when large spatial disagreement occured between maturity dates predicted using WRF5K and PRISM. These results suggest that the spatial uncertainties in temperature data would affect the reliability of the phenology and, as a result, yield predictions at a greater degree than those in solar radiation data. This merits further studies to assess the uncertainties of crop yield forecasts using a wide range of crop calendars.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.59 no.12
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• pp.2202-2211
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• 2010

The wind power prediction system is composed of a meteorological forecasting module, calculation module of wind power output and HMI(Human Machine Interface) visualization system. The final information from this system is a short-term (6hr ahead) and mid-term (48hr ahead) wind power prediction value. The meteorological forecasting module for wind speed and direction forecasting is a combination of physical and statistical model. In this system, the WRF(Weather Research and Forecasting) model, which is a three-dimensional numerical weather model, is used as the physical model and the GFS(Global Forecasting System) models is used for initial condition forecasting. The 100m resolution terrain data is used to improve the accuracy of this system. In addition, optimization of the physical model carried out using historic weather data in Jeju. The mid-term prediction value from the physical model is used in the statistical method for a short-term prediction. The final power prediction is calculated using an optimal adjustment between the currently observed data and data predicted from the power curve model. The final wind power prediction value is provided to customs using a HMI visualization system. The aim of this study is to further improve the accuracy of this prediction system and develop a practical system for power system operation and the energy market in the Smart-Grid.

• Atmosphere
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.673-686
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• 2016

Understanding limitation of simulation for Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) height in mesoscale meteorological model is important for accurate meteorological variable and diffusion of air pollution. This study examined the accuracy for simulated PBL heights using two different PBL schemes (MYJ, YSU) in Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model during the radiosonde observation period. The simulated PBL height were verified using atmospheric sounding data obtained from radiosonde observations that were conducted during 5 months from August to December 2014 over the Gumi weir in Nakdong river. Four Dimensional Data Assimilation (FDDA) using radiosonde observation data were conducted to reduce error of PBL height in WRF model. The assessment result of PBL height showed that RMSE with YSU scheme were lower than that with MYJ scheme in the day and night time, respectively. Especially, the WRF model with YSU scheme produced lower PBL height than with the MYJ scheme during night time. The YSU scheme showed lower RMSE than the MYJ scheme on sunny, cloudy and rainy day, too. The experiment result of FDDA showed that PBL height error were reduced by FDDA and PBL height at the nudging coefficient of $3.0{\times}10^{-1}$ (YSU_FDDA_2) were similar to observation compared to the nudging coefficient of $3.0{\times}10^{-4}$ (YSU_FDDA_1).

• Atmosphere
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.637-656
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• 2021

The United States has been known as the world's major producer of crops such as wheat, corn, and soybeans. Therefore, using meteorological long-term forecast data to project reliable crop yields in the United States is important for planning domestic food policies. The current study is part of an effort to improve the seasonal predictability of regional-scale precipitation across the United States for estimating crop production in the country. For the purpose, a dynamic downscaling method using Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is utilized. The WRF simulation covers the crop-growing period (March to October) during 2000-2020. The initial and lateral boundary conditions of WRF are derived from the Pusan National University Coupled General Circulation Model (PNU CGCM), a participant model of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Climate Center (APCC) Long-Term Multi-Model Ensemble Prediction System. For bias correction of downscaled daily precipitation, empirical quantile mapping (EQM) is applied. The downscaled data set without and with correction are called WRF_UC and WRF_C, respectively. In terms of mean precipitation, the EQM effectively reduces the wet biases over most of the United States and improves the spatial correlation coefficient with observation. The daily precipitation of WRF_C shows the better performance in terms of frequency and extreme precipitation intensity compared to WRF_UC. In addition, WRF_C shows a more reasonable performance in predicting drought frequency according to intensity than WRF_UC.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.158-170
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• 2015

This study evaluates the wind speed forecast near the surface layer using the Weather Research Forecasting with Large Eddy Simulation (WRF-LES) model in order to compare the planetary boundary layer (PBL) parameterization with the LES model in terms of different spatial resolution. A numerical simulation is conducted with 1-km and 333-m horizontal resolution over the Gangwon Province including complex mountains and coastal region. The numerical experiments with 1-km and 333-m horizontal resolution employ PBL parameterization and LES, respectively. The wind speed forecast in mountainous region shows a better forecast performance in 333-m experiment than in 1-km, while wind speed in coastal region is similar to the observation in 1-km spatial resolution experiment. Therefore, LES experiment, which directly simulates the turbulence process near the surface layer, contributes to more accurate forecast of surface wind speed in mountainous regions.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.33-44
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• 2020

Recently, a variety of modeling studies have been conducted to examine the air quality over South Korea during the Korea - United States Air Quality (KORUS-AQ) campaign period (May 1 to June 10, 2016). This study investigates the impact of different meteorological initializations on atmospheric modeling results. We conduct several simulations during the KORUS-AQ period using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with two different initial datasets, which is FNL of NCEP and ERA5 of ECMWF. Comparing the raw initial data, ERA5 showed better accuracy in the temperature, wind speed, and mixing ratio fields than those of NCEP-FNL. On the other hand, the results of WRF simulations with ERA5 showed better accuracy in the simulated temperature and mixing ratio than those with FNL, except for wind speed. Comparing the nudging efficiency of temperature and wind speed fields, the grid nudging effect on the FNL simulation was larger than that on the ERA5 simulation, but the results of mixing ratio field was the opposite. Overall, WRF simulation with ERA5 data showed a better performance for temperature and mixing ratio simulations than that with FNL data. For wind speed simulation, however, WRF simulation with FNL data indicated more accurate results compared to that with ERA5 data.

• Atmosphere
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.387-400
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• 2012

This study aims at examining the sensitivity of numerical simulations to the resolution of initial and boundary data, and to an application of WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) 3DVAR (Three Dimension Variational data Assimilation). To do this, we ran the WRF model by using GDAS (Global Data Assimilation System) FNL (Final analyses) and the KLAPS (Korea Local Analysis and Prediction System) analyses as the WRF's initial and boundary data, and by using an initial field made by assimilating the radar data to the KLAPS analyses. For the sensitivity experiment, we selected a heavy rainfall case of 21 September 2010, where there was localized torrential rain, which was recorded as 259.5 mm precipitation in a day at Seoul. The result of the simulation using the FNL as initial and boundary data (FNL exp) showed that the localized heavy rainfall area was not accurately simulated and that the simulated amount of precipitation was about 4% of the observed accumulated precipitation. That of the simulation using KLAPS analyses as initial and boundary data (KLAPC exp) showed that the localized heavy rainfall area was simulated on the northern area of Seoul-Gyeonggi area, which renders rather difference in location, and that the simulated amount was underestimated as about 6.4% of the precipitation. Finally, that of the simulation using an initial field made by assimilating the radar data to the KLAPS using 3DVAR system (KLAP3D exp) showed that the localized heavy rainfall area was located properly on Seoul-Gyeonggi area, but still the amount itself was underestimated as about 29% of the precipitation. Even though KLAP3D exp still showed an underestimation in the precipitation, it showed the best result among them. Even if it is difficult to generalize the effect of data assimilation by one case, this study showed that the radar data assimilation can somewhat improve the accuracy of the simulated precipitation.