• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.712-736
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• 2022

To understand the characteristics of low-level clouds (CLs), environmental variables are composited on each CL using individual surface observations and six-hourly upper-air meteorologies around the globe. Individual CLs has its own distinct environmental conditions. Over the eastern subtropical and western North Pacific Ocean in JJA, stratocumulus (CL5) has a colder sea surface temperature (SST), stronger and lower inversion, and more low-level cloud amount (LCA) than the climatology whereas cumulus (CL12) has the opposite characteristics. Over the eastern subtropical Pacific, CL5 and CL12 are influenced by cold and warm advection within the PBL, respectively but have similar cold advection over the western North Pacific. This indicates that the fundamental physical process distinguishing CL5 and CL12 is not the horizontal temperature advection but the interaction with the underlying sea surface, i.e., the deepening-decoupling of PBL and the positive feedback between shortwave radiation and SST. Over the western North Pacific during JJA, sky-obscuring fog (CL11), no low-level cloud (CL0), and fair weather stratus (CL6) are associated with anomalous warm advection, surface-based inversion, mean upward flow, and moist mid-troposphere with the strongest anomalies for CL11 followed by CL0. Over the western North Pacific during DJF, bad weather stratus (CL7) occurs in the warm front of the extratropical cyclone with anomalous upward flow while cumulonimbus (CL39) occurs on the rear side of the cold front with anomalous downward flow. Over the tropical oceans, CL7 has strong positive (negative) anomalies of temperature in the upper troposphere (PBL), relative humidity, and surface wind speed in association with the mesoscale convective system while CL12 has the opposite anomalies and CL39 is in between.

• Atmosphere
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.343-364
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• 2014

This study presents local and synoptic conditions associated with extreme heavy snowfall events in the Yeongdong region, as well as the temporal and spatial variability of these conditions. During the last 12 years (2001~2012), 3 extreme snowfall events occurred in the Yeongdong region, which recorded daily snowfall greater than 50 cm, respectively. In these events, one of the noticeable features is the occurrence of heavy hourly snowfall greater than 10 cm. It was reported from satellite analysis that these heavy snowfall may be closely related to mesoscale convective clouds. In this paper the 3 extreme events are examined on their synoptic environments associated with the developments of mesoscale convective system using numerical model output. These 3 events all occurred in strongly forced synoptic environments where 500 and 300 hPa troughs and 500 hPa thermal troughs were evident. From the analysis of diagnostic variables, it was found in all 3 events that absolute vorticity and cold air advection were dominant in the Yeongdong region and its surrounding sea at upper levels, especially at around 500 hPa (absolute vorticity: $20{\sim}60{\times}10^{-5}s^{-1}$, cold air advection: $-10{\sim}-20^{\circ}C$ $12hr^{-1}$). Moreover, the spatial distributions of cold advection showed mostly the shape of a narrow band along the eastern coast of Korea. These features of absolute vorticity and cold advection at 500 hPa were sustained for about 10 hours before the occurrence of maximum hourly snowfall.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.119-134
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• 2023

The synoptic, thermodynamic, and dynamic characteristics of a snowfall event that occurred in the Yeongdong region on March 1-2, 2021, were investigated. Surface weather charts, ERA5 reanalysis data, rawinsonde data, GK-2A satellite data, and WISSDOM data were used for analysis. The snow depth, exceeding 10 cm, was observed at four weather stations during the analysis period. The maximum snow depth (37.4 cm) occurred at Bukgangneung. According to the analysis of the weather charts, old and dry air was trapped within relatively warm, humid air in the upper atmosphere over the East Sea and adjacent Yeongdong region. This caused unstable atmospheric conditions that led to developing convective clouds and snowfall over Bukgangneung. In particular, based on the thermodynamic and kinematic vertical analysis, we suggest that strong winds attributable to the vertical gradient of potential temperature in the low layer and the development of convective instability due to cold advection played a significant role in the occurrence of snowfall in the Yeongdong region. These results were confirmed from the vertical analysis of the rawinsonde data.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.113-125
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• 2012

The estimations of the surface rain intensity and rain-related physical variables derived from two independent Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite sensors, TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR), were compared over four different oceans. The precipitating clouds developed most frequently in the warmest sea surface temperature (SST) region of the west Pacific, which is 1.5 times more frequent than in the east Pacific and the tropical Atlantic oceans. However, the east Pacific exhibited the most intense rain intensity for the convective and mixed rain types while the tropical Atlantic showed the most intense rain intensity for all TMI rainy pixels. It was found that the deviation of TMI-derived rain rate yielded a big difference in region-to-region and rain type-to-type if the PR rain intensity value is assumed to be closer to the truth. Furthermore, the deviation by rain types showed opposite signs between convective and non-convective rain types. It was found that the region-to-region deviation differences reached more than 200% even though the selected tropical oceans have relatively similar geophysical environments. Therefore, the validation for the microwave rain estimation needs to be performed according to both rain types and climate regimes, and it also requires more sophisticated TMI algorithm which reflects the locality of rainfall characteristics.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.449-455
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• 2003

Climatic elements were investigated in order to understand the atmospheric environment around the Pohang area and for use as basic information in prediction. In this analysis, we could find that the annual mean temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation are 14.39$^{\circ}C$, 63.3%, and 1.178mm, respectively. The prevailing wind direction was southwestern, and the mean wind speed is 2.7m/s. The amount of cloud was abundant during the summer because of the Jang-ma phenomenon and convective clouds induced by terrain effect. The annual mean duration of sunshine represented about 2,221 hours.

• Atmosphere
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2012

The Atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs) derived using infrared (IR) channel imagery of geostationary satellites have been utilized widely for real-time weather analysis and data assimilation into global numerical prediction model. As the horizontal resolution of sensors on-board satellites gets higher, it becomes possible to identify atmospheric motions induced by convective clouds ($meso-{\beta}$ and $meso-{\gamma}$ scales). The National Institute of Meteorological Research (NIMR) developed the high resolution visible (HRV) AMV algorithm to detect mesoscale atmospheric motions including ageostrophic flows. To retrieve atmospheric motions smaller than $meso-{\beta}$ scale effectively, the target size is reduced and the visible channel imagery of geostationary satellite with 1 km resolution is used. For the accurate AMVs, optimal conditions are decided by investigating sensitivity of algorithm to target selection and correction method of height assignment. The results show that the optimal conditions are target size of 32 km ${\times}$ 32 km, the grid interval as same as target size, and the optimal target selection method. The HRV AMVs derived with these conditions depict more effectively tropical cyclone OMAIS than IR AMVs and the mean speed of HRV AMVs in OMAIS is slightly faster than that of IR AMVs. Optimized mesoscale AMVs are derived for 6 months (Feb. 2010-Jun. 2010) and validated with radiosonde observations, which indicates NIMR's HRV AMV algorithm can retrieve successfully mesoscale atmospheric motions.

• Atmosphere
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.435-444
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• 2016

In spite of considerable progress in the recent decades, there still remain large uncertainties in numerical cloud models. In this study, effects of uncertainty in terminal velocity of graupel on cloud simulation are investigated. For this, a two-dimensional bin microphysics cloud model is employed, and deep convective clouds are simulated under idealized environmental conditions. In the sensitivity experiments, the terminal velocity of graupel is changed to twice and half the velocity in the control experiment. In the experiment with fast graupel terminal velocity, a large amount of graupel mass is present in the lower layer. On the other hand, in the experiment with slow graupel terminal velocity, almost all graupel mass remains in the upper layer. The graupel size distribution exhibits that as graupel terminal velocity increases, in the lower layer, the number of graupel particles increases and the peak radius in the graupel mass size distribution decreases. In the experiment with fast graupel terminal velocity, the vertical velocity is decreased mainly due to a decrease in riming that leads to a decrease in latent heat release and an increase in evaporative cooling via evaporation, sublimation, and melting that leads to more stable atmosphere. This decrease in vertical velocity causes graupel particles to fall toward the ground easier. By the changes in graupel terminal velocity, the accumulated surface precipitation amount differs up to about two times. This study reveals that the terminal velocity of graupel should be estimated more accurately than it is now.

• Atmosphere
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.119-131
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• 2017

We present and discuss the Tropopause Folding Turbulence Detection (TFTD) algorithm for the Korean Communication, Ocean, Meteorological Satellite (COMS) which is originally developed for the Tropopause Folding Turbulence Product (TFTP) from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-R. The TFTD algorithm assumes that the tropopause folding is linked to the Clear Air Turbulence (CAT), and thereby the tropopause folding areas are detected from the rapid spatial gradients of the upper tropospheric specific humidity. The Layer Averaged Specific Humidity (LASH) is used to represent the upper tropospheric specific humidity calculated using COMS $6.7{\mu}m$ water vapor channel and ERA-interim reanalysis temperature at 300, 400, and 500 hPa. The comparison of LASH with the numerical model specific humidity shows a strong negative correlation of 80% or more. We apply the single threshold, which is determined from sensitivity analysis, for cloud-clearing to overcome strong gradient of LASH at the edge of clouds. The tropopause break lines are detected from the location of strong LASH-gradient using the Canny edge detection based on the image processing technique. The tropopause folding area is defined by expanding the break lines by 2-degree positive gradient direction. The validations of COMS TFTD is performed with Pilot Reports (PIREPs) filtered out Convective Induced Turbulence (CIT) from Dec 2013 to Nov 2014 over the South Korea. The score test shows 0.49 PODy (Probability of Detection 'Yes') and 0.64 PODn (Probability of Detection 'No'). Low POD results from various kinds of CAT reported from PIREPs and the characteristics of high sensitivity in edge detection algorithm.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.222-237
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• 2020

A heavy (93 mm hr^-1) rainfall event accompanied by lightning occurred over Gangneung in the Yeongdong region of South Korea on August 6, 2018. This study investigated the underlying mechanism for the heavy rainfall event by using COMS satellite cloud products, surface- and upper-level weather charts, ECMWF reanalysis data, and radiosonde data. The COMS satellite cloud products showed rainfall exceeding 10 mm hr^-1, with the lowest cloud-top temperature of approximately -65℃ and high cloud optical thickness of approximately 20-25. The radiosonde data showed the existence of strong vertical wind shear between the upper and lower cloud layers. Furthermore, a strong inversion in the equivalent potential temperature was observed at a pressure altitude of 700 hPa. In addition, there was a highly developed cloud layer at a height of 13 km, corresponding with the vertical analysis of the ECMWF data. This demonstrated the increased atmospheric instability induced by the vertical differences in equivalent potential temperature in the Yeongdong region. Consequently, cold, dry air was trapped within relatively warm, humid air in the upper atmosphere over the East Sea and adjacent Yeongdong region. This caused unstable atmospheric conditions that led to rapidly developing convective clouds and heavy rainfall over Gangneung.

• Atmosphere
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.227-241
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• 2016

This study investigated the cause of the heavy snowfall that occurred in the East Coast of Korea from 6 February to 14 February 2014. The synoptic conditions were analyzed using blocking index, equivalent potential temperature, potential vorticity, maritime temperature difference, temperature advection, and ground convergence. During the case period, a large blocking pattern developed over the Western Pacific causing the flow to be stagnant, and there was a North-South oriented High-to-Low pressure system over the Korean Peninsula because of this arrangement. The case period was divided into three parts based on the synoptic forcing that was responsible for the heavy snowfall; detailed analyses were conducted for the first and last period. In the first period, a heavy snowfall occurred over the entire Korean Peninsula due to strong updrafts from baroclinic instability and a low pressure caused by potential vorticity located at the mid-troposphere. In the lower atmosphere, a North-South oriented High-to-Low pressure system over the Eastern Korea intensified the easterly airflow and created a convergence zone near the ground which strengthened the upslope effect of the Taebaek Mountain range with a cumulative fresh snowfall amount of 41 cm in the East Coast region. In the last period, the cold air nestled in the Maritime Province of Siberia and Manchuria strengthened much more than that in the first half and extended to the East Sea. The temperature difference between the 850 hPa air and the SST was large and convective clouds developed over the sea. The highest cumulative fresh snow amount of 39.7 cm was recorded in the coastal area during this period. During the entire period, vertically oriented equivalent potential temperature showed neutral stability layer that helped the cloud formation and development in the East Coast. The 2014 heavy snowfall case over the East Coast provinces of Korea were due to: 1) stagnation of the system by blocking pattern, 2) the dynamic effect of mid-level potential vorticity of 1.6 PVU, 3) the easterly air flow from North-South oriented High-to-Low pressure system, 4) the existence of vertically oriented neutral stable layer, and 5) the expansion of strong cold air into the East Sea which created a large temperature difference between the air and the ocean.