• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.145-153
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• 2016

Using monthly rainfalls, this study investigated outliers of annual and/or seasonal rainfall for quantitative assessment of historical droughts in Korea. Based on the analysis of annual rainfall, Icheon, Geochang, Jeongeup, Suncheon and Jangheung gaging stations were selected to represent the major river basins, because they had most frequent dry years. The overall results indicated that the years of 1988 and 1994 were the worst dry years. Although the 2001 drought was not severe, it resulted in typical agricultural drought damage mainly in Seomjin and Yeongsan river basin due to the lack of agricultural water. On the other hand, the droughts of 1981-1982 and 1994-1995 were long term nation wide droughts that lasted more than two years resulting in extensive drought damages to parts of the country.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.497-509
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• 2009

Records on natural hazards such as droughts, floods, smallpox and attacks of grasshoppers are classified and analyzed during the Ancient Times(BC 57$\sim$AD 935) based on the Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms Age(Samguksaki main record), and influences on human activities and relationships of each natural hazard are studied. The strongest influences on the agricultural productivity were the drought and the influences of floods were weak. The most floods were not destructive hazards because the cultivated lands were distributed in the valley plains and the towns and villages were constructed in the area free from the floods during the Ancient Times. The attacks of grasshoppers have the high frequencies with the droughts. The smallpox of the Ancient Times has no relationships with the dearth, floods and droughts. This means that the waterborne infections happened periodically and after the unification, the infectious diseases happened continuously due to the urbanization leading the concentration of population on the capital. Two cycles of droughts are recognized, and they happened with the time intervals of approximately 500 years during approximately 1000 years in Shilla dynasty.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.48 no.12
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• pp.1011-1021
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• 2015

This study aims to investigate droughts from the magnitude perspective based on the SPI (Standardized Precipitation Index) and the theory of runs applicable to quantitative analysis of drought in South Korea. In addition, the dry spell analysis was conducted on the drought history in the five major river basins of South Korea to obtain the magnitude, duration and severity of drought, and the quantitative evaluation has been made on historical droughts by estimating the return period using the SDF (Severity-Duration-Frequency) curve gained through drought frequency analysis. The analysis results showed that the return periods for droughts at the regional and major river basin scales were clearly identified. The return periods of severe drought that occurred around the major river basins in South Korea turn out to be mostly 30 to 50 years with the years of the worst drought in terms of severity being 1988 and 1994. In particular, South Korea experienced extremely severe droughts for two consecutive years during the period between 1994 and 1995. Drought in 2014 occurred in the Han River basin and was evaluated as the worst one in terms of severity and magnitude.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.1166-1171
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• 2006

Drought is defined by differently for the several scientific and technical fields such as hydrological drought, agricultural drought, meteorological drought, climatological drought, atmospheric drought. A lot of drought indices have been developed to quantify drought severity levels. However these drought indices might be expressed differently as the drought conditions for specific period because the drought severity level is using different types of data on each condition. It is necessary for development of quantative drought representation methods by drought index application. In this research, the reaction to the historical droughts is analyzed after estimation of PDSI, SPI and MSWSI(Modified Surface Water Supply Index) in south korean territory. Lastly the drought representation methods were examiner combining the drought indices by drought indices. The arithmetic mean drought indices that include PDSI, SPI, in yearly basis from 1971 to 2001 and MSWSI in yearly basis from 1974 to 2001 were estimated through the whole nation. The applicability of drought indices are examined based on the observed drought data for national and regional droughts. The result shows that PDSI, SPI(3), SPI(6), and MSWSI have proven to be sensitive enough to the historical drought. The correlation analysis of each drought index was conducted whether they could show the long and short term drought equally. The analysis of how appropriately represent for the historical drought was used for determining for the combined drought index. Consequently, PDSI, SPI(3), SPI(6), and MSWSI have been appeared as suitable indices for the development of quantitative drought representation methods. For the decision of weight on combining PDSI, SPI(3), SPI(6), and MSWSI, drought map was made for eighteen alternative to decide weight. The results showed that PDSI(20%), SPI(3)(60%), SPI(6)(10%), and MSWSI(10%) have been the most well matched weights. Using selected weights of each drought indices and by reconstructing the national mean drought severity on yearly basis, the fact that the year of historical drought is in accordance with the verified one for drought representation. In short, the acquired technique using combined drought index can be used for useful and believable quantitative method of drought analysis.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.44 no.11
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• pp.889-902
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• 2011

In this study, frequency analysis using drought index had implemented for the derivation of drought severity-duration-frequency (SDF) curves to enable quantitative evaluations of past historical droughts having been occurred in Korean Peninsular. Seoul, Daejeon, Daegu, Gwangju, and Busan weather stations were selected and precipitation data during 1974~2010 (37 years) was used for the calculation of Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and frequency analysis. Based on the results of goodness of fit test on the probability distribution, Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) was selected as most suitable probability distribution for the drought frequency analysis using SPI. This study can suggest return periods for historical major drought events by using newrly derived SDF curves for each stations. In case of 1994~1995 droughts which had focused on southern part of Korea. SDF curves of Gwangju weather station showed 50~100 years of return period and Busan station showed 100~200 years of return period. Besides, in case of 1988~1989 droughts, SDF of Seoul weather station were appeared as having return periods of 300 years.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.3B
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• pp.253-264
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• 2011

Drought assessment is usually performed qualitatively and/or quantitatively after defining a drought from meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, and socioeconomic perspective. Most of the drought analyses focus on meteorological, agricultural, and hydrological droughts, whereas the socioeconomic drought evaluation has been not actively performed since it needs different aspects. In this study, after defining a socioeconomic drought applicable to assess droughts in Korea, we suggested Water Excess Deficiency Index (WEDI) as an useful tool to evaluate socioeconomic droughts, based on water demand condition and water supply condition. This study verified the validity of WEDI by comparing with other drought indices (SPI, PDSI) and historical drought condition in Gyeongsang-do in 2001. The results indicated that the WEDI can be used to assess regional droughts in a socioeconomic perspective.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.47 no.9
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• pp.813-824
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• 2014

In this study, drought of North Korea are analyzed using drought index. 27 weather stations are selected and monthly precipitation and average temperature data are collected for drought analysis. SC-PDSI is used for drought analysis and calculated using collected weather data during 1984~2013 (30 years) in 27 weather stations. From the analysis result of historical drought event using drought index, it is confirmed that severe droughts occurred in the early and mid 2000's at most stations. Secondly, drought frequency analysis was carried out for the derivation of drought severity-duration-frequency (SDF) curves to enable quantitative evaluations of past historical droughts having been occurred in 6 stations (Pyeongyang, Hamheung, Cheongjin, Wonsan, Haeju, Sinuiju). This study can suggest return periods for historical major drought events by using derived SDF curves for each station. In the result, drought events in the early and mid 2000's had return periods of 20~50 years.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.1851-1860
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• 2013

The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is widely applied to evaluate for meteorological droughts. However, the SPI is limited to capture a drought event with a short duration, expecially shorter than one month. In this study, we proposed a daily SPI (DSPI) as a way to overcome the limitation of the monthly SPI for drought monitoring. In order to objectively assess the ability of the drought reproduction of the DSPI, we performed a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis using the quantified drought records from official reports, newspapers, etc. The results of ROC analysis showed that the DSPI has an ability to reproduce short-term drought compared with other indices. It also showed that the main cause of historical droughts was the shortage of rainfall accumulated during the time period less than 90 days compared with the rainfall of normal years.

• Atmosphere
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.199-208
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• 2012

This study was conducted in order to analyze weather characteristics during the reign of King Sejo in the Chosun Dynasty based on The Annals of the Chosun Dynasty. For this purpose, first of all, we need to determine whether The Annals of the Chosun Dynasty is a reliable material for research on weather characteristics. Thus, we compared weather phenomena during the reign of King Sejo with those in China and Japan in the same period. From the results, it was found that The Annals of the Chosun Dynasty is a useful material at least to grasp macroscopic trends in weather phenomena. Based on this assumption, we analyzed weather characteristics during the reign of King Sejo using data from The Annals of the Chosun Dynasty. During the days of King Sejo, the climate was not changed violently and there were not many disasters caused by abnormal climate such as bad harvests. This suggests that the climate was relatively stable during the period of King Sejo. As a consequence of stable weather, famine decreased markedly. However, this was not only because of stable climate but also because of the government's active efforts to reduce disasters. As droughts and floods were not frequent, social costs for recovery from disasters also decreased considerably and the saved money could be invested in the construction of social safety nets for the prevention of disasters. One of factors supporting the enthronement of King Sejo was a series of heavily damaging bad harvests during the reign of Kings Munjong and Danjong. The prevention of bad harvests was a historical mission given to the regime of King Sejo. During his reign, King Sejo promoted various policies in order to stop bad harvests. Such efforts included the government's active construction of embankments, introduction of seeds suitable for reclaimed lands, and inspiration of the consciousness of forceful farming enduring natural disasters such as floods. As a result, abnormal weathers such as floods and droughts did not lead directly to bad harvests.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2023.05a
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• pp.48-48
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• 2023

The intensified droughts under climate change are expected to threaten stable water resource availability. Droughts exceeding the magnitude of historical variability could occur increasingly frequently under future climate conditions. It is crucial to understand how drought will evolve over time because the assumption of hydrological stationarity of the past decades would be inappropriate for future water resources management. However, the timing of the emergence of unprecedented drought conditions under climate change has rarely been examined. Here, using multimodel hydrological simulations, we investigate the changes in the frequency of hydrological drought (defined as abnormally low river discharge) under high and low greenhouse gas concentration scenarios and with existing water resources management and estimate the timing of the first emergence of unprecedented regional drought conditions that persist for over several consecutive years. This new metric enables a new quantification of the urgency of adaptation and mitigation with regard to drought under climate change. The times are detected for several sub-continental-scale regions, and three regions, namely, southwestern South America, Mediterranean Europe, and northern Africa, exhibit particularly robust and earlier critical times under the high-emission scenario. These three regions are expected to confront unprecedented conditions within the next 30 years with a high likelihood, regardless of the emission scenarios. In addition, the results obtained herein demonstrate the benefits of the lower-emission pathway in reducing the likelihood of emergence. The Paris Agreement goals are shown to be effective in reducing the likelihood to the unlikely level in most regions. Nevertheless, appropriate and prior adaptation measures are considered indispensable to when facing unprecedented drought conditions. The results of this study underscore the importance of improving drought preparedness within the considered time horizons.