• Atmosphere
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.321-336
• /
• 2016

Damages caused by torrential rain occur every year in Korea and summer time convection can cause strong thunderstorms to develop which bring dangerous weather such as torrential rain, gusts, and flash flooding. On 6 August 2013 a sudden torrential rain concentrated over the inland of Southern Korean Peninsula occurred. This was an event characterized as a mesoscale multicellular convection. The purpose of this study is to analyze the conditions of the multicellular convection and the synoptic and mesoscale nature of the system development. To this end, dynamical and thermodynamic analyses of surface and upper-level weather charts, satellite images, soundings, reanalysis data and WRF model simulations are performed. At the beginning stage there was a cool, dry air intrusion in the upper-level of the Korean Peninsula, and a warm humid air flow from the southwest in the lower-level creating atmospheric instability. This produced a single cell cumulonimbus cloud in the vicinity of Baengnyeongdo, and due to baroclinic instability, shear and cyclonic vorticity the cloud further developed into a multicellular convection. The cloud system moved southeast towards Seoul metropolitan area accompanied by lightning, heavy precipitation and strong wind gusts. In addition, atmospheric instability due to daytime insolation caused new convective cells to develop in the upstream part of the Sobaek Mountain which merged with existing multicellular convection creating a larger system. This case was unusual because the system was affected little by the upper-level jet stream which is typical in Korea. The development and propagation of the multicellular convection showed strong mesoscale characteristics and was not governed by large synoptic-scale dynamics. In particular, the system moved southeast crossing the Peninsula diagonally from northwest to southeast and did not follow the upper-level westerly pattern. The analysis result shows that the movement of the system can be determined by the vertical wind shear.

• Journal of National Security and Military Science
• /
• s.4
• /
• pp.241-287
• /
• 2006

16th CPC National Party Congress established multi-polarization strategy as an external strategy, and 'The Great Reinvigoration of Chinese Nation' as the aim of The Great Strategy of China. It is required to maintain stabilized and peaceful surrounding circumstance in order to make it possible. The ideal surrounding circumstance that China is aiming for is to achieve multi-polarization of international society while maintaining strategic deterrence. Multi-polarization now in 'One super Multi powers' is that 'Multi powers' deter 'One super' to prevent predominance of USA and to decentralize the power. China wishes to realign international order as it accomplishes multi-polarization. China who wants 'Peace and Stabilization' emphasizes autonomy, peace and unification of Korean peninsula. Autonomy means the restraint intervention of foreign power, that is, American influence in Korean peninsula. Multi-polarization strategy of China will be used in Korean peninsula to solve nuclear issue of North Korea, to support neutral unification and to keep balance of power with USA, Japan and Russia as it renders economic advantages to South Korea and security engagement to North Korea, based on special geographical, cultural and historical relationship with two Koreas. The nuclear issue of North Korea will be a stage to test multi-polarization of China. When it deduces positive solution of nuclear issue due to successful six-party talks, and advances to security talks of Northeast Asia, it will contribute a lot to power and elevation of national stature of China in international society. Thus, the Chinese strategy will be an accommodative condition for the security of South Korea, and it requires wise decision of South Korea to make hay while the sun shine.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
• /
• 2002.10a
• /
• pp.366-366
• /
• 2002

Cloud-to ground lightning and total precipitation over Korean peninsula during the summer monsoon season are studied extensively with a special emphasis on the characteristics of convective precipitation. Ten years (1988-1997) lightning and rainfall data and a temporal and spatial scale of one month and 10$^2$ km$^2$ respectively are used to calculate the monthly number of CG lightning flash count. Monsoonal convective activity is higher over the west coast with maxima at two different regions, one in the northern part which increases nortwestward and the other is at the middle west coast of Korea increasing towards the west coast. East coast represents the minimum value of monsoonal convective activity. In the east coast of Korean peninsula, particularly in the region east of Tae-back mountain, the value of Rain yield, (which is defined as the ratio of total precipitation to CG flash count over a common area), is maximum with an average value of 3$\times$10$^{8}$ kg fl$^{-1}$, while the minimum value of rain yield is occurred in the west of Tae-back mountain, with an average value of 0.8$\times$10$^{8}$ kg fl$^{-1}$. Results show in the west coast stations, nearly 82% of the total rainfall is convective in nature, at the middle of the peninsula 53% of the total rain is convective while in the east coast stations 46% contribution from the convective rain is seen. Kanghwa receives the maximum convective rain while at Ulsan the convective rain is minimum. Correlation coefficient between the total precipitation and CG lightning during the summer monsoon season is 0.54.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
• /
• 2015.05a
• /
• pp.521-521
• /
• 2015

This study evaluated the gap filler radar as an implementation of the 1.5 km CAPPI data in Korea. The use of the 1.5 km CAPPI data was an inevitable choice, given the topography of the Korean Peninsula and the location of the radar. However, there still exists a significant portion of beam blockage, and thus there has been debate about the need to introduce the gap filler radar (or, the gap-filler). This study evaluated the possible benefits of introducing gap-fillers over the Korean Peninsula. As a first step, the error of the radar data was quantified by the G/R ratio and RMSE, and the radar data over the Korean Peninsula were evaluated. Then, the gap-fillers were located where the error was high, whose effect was then evaluated by the decrease in the G/R ratio and RMSE. The results show that the mean values of the G/R ratio and RMSE of the 1.5 m CAPPI data over the Korean Peninsula were estimated to be about 2.5 and 4.5 mm/hr, respectively. Even after the mean-field bias correction, the RMSE of the 1.5 km CAPPI data has not decreased much to be remained very high around 4.4 mm/hr. Unfortunately, the effect of the gap-filler on the 1.5 CAPPI data was also found very small, just 1 - 2%. However, the gap-filler could be beneficial, if the lowest elevation angle data were used instead of the 1.5 km CAPPI data. The effect of five gap-fillers could be up to 7% decrease in RMSE.

• Korean Journal of Plant Taxonomy
• /
• v.46 no.1
• /
• pp.33-54
• /
• 2016

Many of the historic plant specimens collected from the Korean Peninsula in the early 20th century deposited in herbaria in Korea were destroyed during the Korean War. However, duplicates of the specimens deposited in the Herbarium of the University of Tokyo (TI) remained unharmed. We examined historic plant specimens, identified undetermined specimens, and made a list to provide fundamental information on the early taxonomic history of Korea. One set of duplicate specimens was donated by TI and deposited into the Chonnam National University herbarium (CNU) and into the herbarium of the National Institute of Biological Resources in Korea (KB).

• Journal of Climate Change Research
• /
• v.2 no.4
• /
• pp.237-251
• /
• 2011

This study presents a review on the recent climate change over the Korean peninsula, which has experienced a significant change due to the human-induced global warming more strongly than other regions. The recent measurement of carbon dioxide concentrations over the Korean peninsula shows a faster rise than the global average, and the increasing trend in surface temperature over this region is much larger than the global mean trend. Recent observational studies reporting the weakened cold extremes and intensified warm extremes over the region support consistently the increase of mean temperature. Surface vegetation greenness in spring has also progressed relatively more quickly. Summer precipitation over the Korean peninsula has increased by about 15% since 1990 compared to the previous period. This was mainly due to an increase in August. On the other hand, a slight decrease in the precipitation (about 5%) during Changma period (rainy season of the East Asian summer monsoon), was observed. The heavy rainfall amounts exhibit an increasing trend particularly since the late 1970s, and a consecutive dry-day has also increased primarily over the southern area. This indicates that the duration of precipitation events has shortened, while their intensity became stronger. During the past decades, there have been more stronger typhoons affecting the Korean peninsula with landing more preferentially over the southeastern area. Meanwhile, the urbanization effect is likely to contribute to the rapid warming, explaining about 28% of total temperature increase during the past 55 years. The impact of El Nino on seasonal climate over the Korean peninsula has been well established - winter [summer] temperatures was generally higher [lower] than normal, and summer rainfall tends to increase during El-Nino years. It is suggested that more frequent occurrence of the 'central-Pacific El-Nino' during recent decades may have induced warmer summer and fall over the Korean peninsula. In short, detection and attribution studies provided fundamental information that needed to construct more reliable projections of future climate changes, and therefore more comprehensive researches are required for better understanding of past climate variations.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.310-317
• /
• 2008

Lg amplitude decrease $Q^{-1}$ is very important because the Lg phase is the largest seismic phase in Korea if hazardous earthquakes occurred at neighbor nations such as Japan and China. Since reliable $Q^{-1}$ from two station method can be obtained by long pair distance of stations or events, we used seismic stations both Korea and Japans recording Korean events. The obtained $Q^{-1}$ values, however, were anomalously high; these misguided values, inconsistent with tectonic activity of Korean Peninsula, seems to be related with high $Q^{-1}$ values of Japan region.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.105-115
• /
• 2001

This study was conducted to analyzed the pattern of $CO_2$ concentration changes in various time scale within and across the Korean Peninsula. We compared that data sets obtained from Moo-Ahn(NAN) station in Korea with those determined from major background observatory stations around the world from the periods of Aug. 1995 to Dec. 1997. The mean $CO_2$concentrations of the MAN area, if computed using the total of 884 daily mean values, were computed to by 374.5$\pm$6.6 ppm. When the background data for MAN were compared with those of other background site, the concentration of MAN was systematically higher than any other comparable sites. Results of correlation analysis between MAN and other background sites generally showed up the existence of strong correlations, indicating that the relative effect of $CO_2$ concentration change can proceed similarly over the globe. However, notable differences in annual growth rate of $CO_2$ between MAN and all the comparative sites suggested that its concentration in th MAN area be regulated in more complicated manners than those in the other areas. It is thus suspected that the data collected form MAN area be not effective enough to represent areal distribution characteristics of $CO_2$in the Korean Peninsula.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
• /
• v.5 no.3
• /
• pp.309-329
• /
• 1995

Seismicity and stress state in the Korean peninsula are studied using the catalogue of historical earthquakes and that from the seismological observations before the 1960s, with the aid of instrumental catalogue up to 1995. It seems that the completeness of the historical catalogue has a significant enhancement during the first two hundred years of the Yi dynasty, i.e., from the 1400s to the 1600s. From then on the catalogue may be regarded as near to complete for strong earthquakes in an overall sense. From the distribution of strong earthquakes, three seismic zones may be identified. From the south to the north, those are the southern seismic zone (남부지진대), the Seoul-Pyongyang seismic zone (서울-평양지진대), and the northern seismic zone (북부지진대). The mechanisms of some earthquakes obtained using first motion read- ings are reevaluated with a grid testing method. The results indicate that the compressional axis is nearly horizontal along the EW direction.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
• /
• v.2 no.3
• /
• pp.161-177
• /
• 1993

The Yellow Sand Events observed over the Korean peninsula during 22-24 April, 1993 were examined using the synoptic data and GMS visible image to identify the transport path of the Yellow Sand and the main factor governing the duration of the Yellow Sand phenomenon. The 850 hPa convergence chart and the 700 hPa trajectory analyses of the air mass laden with Yellow Sand particles suggested that the Yellow Sand particles observed over Korea were probably transported from the Gobi Desert and the Loess Plateau. The duration of the Yellow Sand Events was about 35-40 hours rather shorter than normal as the high pressure system centered near the Mongolia region moved rapidly toward the Yellow Sea, which drove away the Yellow Sand particles over the Korean peninsula toward the Japan Islands, furthermore the low-level stratification of the air mass over the Korean penishula showed the unstable atmospheric condition leading to atmospheric diffusion of the particles. The trajectory analyses and the GMS visible image indicated that the long-range transport of the air mass laden with the Yellow Sand particles of this case was more dependent on the 700 hPa air flow than on the 850 hPa air flow.