• Atmosphere
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.467-481
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• 2017

A correction method of reflectivity in partial beam blockage (PBB) area is suggested, which is based on the combination of digital terrain information and self-consistency principle between polarimetric observation. First, the reflectivity was corrected by adding the radar energy loss estimated from beam blockage simulation using digital elevation model (DEM) and beam propagation geometry in standard atmosphere. The additional energy loss by unexpected obstacles and non-standard beam propagation was estimated by using the coefficient between accumulated reflectivity ($Z_H$) and differences of differential phase shift (${\Phi}_{DP}$) along radial direction. The proposed method was applied to operational S-band dual-polarization radar at Jindo and its performance was compared with those of simulation method and self-consistency method for six rainfall cases. When the accumulated reflectivity and increment of ${\Phi}_{DP}$ along radial direction are too small, the self-consistency method has failed to correct the reflectivity while the combined method has corrected the reflectivity bias reasonably. The correction based on beam simulation showed the underestimation. For evaluation of rainfall estimation, the FBs (FRMSEs) of simulation method and self-consistency principle were -0.32 (0.59) and -0.30 (0.57), respectively. The proposed method showed the lowest FB (-0.24) and FRMSE (0.50). The FB and FMSE were improved by about 18% and by 19% in comparison to those before correction (-0.42 and 0.70). We can conclude that the proposed method can improve the accuracy of rainfall estimation in PBB area.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.42 no.8
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• pp.607-617
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• 2009

Radar beam blocking which is partially or entirely interrupted by obstacles like a mountain causes underestimation of the rainfall. In this paper, partially blocked radar reflectivity is retrieved using the ARM(Accumulated Reflectivity Map). ARM is made by accumulation of the radar reflectivity and very useful product to analyze the beam blockage. The blockage correcting map could be obtained by assuming the spatially uniform reflectivity field in the ARM. This method is applied to the cases of typhoon and Changma, and we obtain the MFE(Mean Fractional Error) from two radar data, the one is objective radar data which is affected by blockage and the other is comparative radar data which is not affected by blockage. Before blocking correction, MFE is 20-35%. However, after correction, MFE decreases to 7-10%.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.553-562
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• 2020

S-band, C-band and X-band radars are used for weather observation purposes. Since the Meteorological Administration, the Ministry of Environment, and Republic of Korea Air Force operate radars according to the purpose of observation by departments, the installation site and observation characteristics are different. From a meteorological point of view, blind observational areas in the low level with an elevation of less than 1 km around the mountainous terrain near Jirisan and Taebaeksan. Assuming a small radar installation, we simulated low-level observations. In order to monitor dangerous weather in North Korea, we analyzed the precipitation of North Korea and simulated a large radar network. Finally, a radar network for Korean Peninsula was proposed.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.47 no.10
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• pp.867-878
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• 2014

Due to the nature of weather radar, blank areas occur due to impediments to observation, such as the ground clutter. Radar beam blockages have resulted in the underestimation rainfall amounts. To overcome these limitations, this study developed the Hybrid Scan Reflectivity (HSR) technique and compared the HSR results with existing methods. As a result, the HSR technique was able to estimate rainfalls in areas from which no reflectivity information was observable using existing methods. In case of estimating rainfalls depending on reflectivity scan techniques and beam-blockage/non beam-blockage, the HSR accuracy is superior. Furthermore, rainfall amounts derived from each method was inputted to the HEC-HMS to examine the accuracy of the flood simulations. The accuracy of the results using the HSR technique in contrast to the RAR calculation system and M-P relation was improved by 7% and 10%(based on correlation coefficients), and 18% and 34%(based on Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency), on average, respectively. Therefore, it is advised that the HSR technique be utilized in the hydrology field to estimate flood discharge more accurately.

• Atmosphere
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.77-87
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• 2014

The radar reflectivity is significantly affected by ground clutter, beam blockage, anomalous propagation (AP), birds, insects, chaff, etc. The quality of radar reflectivity is very important in quantitative precipitation estimation. Therefore, Weather Radar Center (WRC) of Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) employed two quality control algorithms: 1) Open Radar Product Generator (ORPG) and 2) fuzzy quality control algorithm to improve quality of radar reflectivity. In this study, an occurrence of AP echoes and the performance of both quality control algorithms are investigated. Consequently, AP echoes frequently occur during the spring and fall seasons. Moreover, while the ORPG QC algorithm has the merit of removing non-precipitation echoes, such as AP echoes, it also removes weak rain echoes and snow echoes. In contrast, the fuzzy QC algorithm has the advantage of preserving snow echoes and weak rain echoes, but it eliminates the partial area of the contaminated echo, including the AP echoes.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.38 no.7
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• pp.496-510
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• 2017

This study presents a new nationwide quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) based on the hybrid surface rainfall (HSR) technique using the weather radar network of Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). This new nationwide HSR is characterized by the synthesis of reflectivity at the hybrid surface that is not affected by ground clutter, beam blockage, non-meteorological echoes, and bright band. The nationwide HSR is classified into static (STATIC) and dynamic HSR (DYNAMIC) mosaic depending on employing a quality control process, which is based on the fuzzy logic approach for single-polarization radar and the spatial texture technique for dual-polarization radar. The STATIC and DYNAMIC were evaluated by comparing with official and operational radar rainfall mosaic (MOSAIC) of KMA for 10 rainfall events from May to October 2014. The correlation coefficients within the block region of STATIC, DYNAMIC and MOSAIC are 0.52, 0.78, and 0.69, respectively, and their mean relative errors are 34.08, 30.08, and 40.71%.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.109-124
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• 2015

A novel approach, hybrid surface rainfall (KNU-HSR) technique developed by Kyungpook Natinal University, was utilized for improving the radar rainfall estimation. The KNU-HSR technique estimates radar rainfall at a 2D hybrid surface consistings of the lowest radar bins that is immune to ground clutter contaminations and significant beam blockage. Two HSR techniques, static and dynamic HSRs, were compared and evaluated in this study. Static HSR technique utilizes beam blockage map and ground clutter map to yield the hybrid surface whereas dynamic HSR technique additionally applies quality index map that are derived from the fuzzy logic algorithm for a quality control in real time. The performances of two HSRs were evaluated by correlation coefficient (CORR), total ratio (RATIO), mean bias (BIAS), normalized standard deviation (NSD), and mean relative error (MRE) for ten rain cases. Dynamic HSR (CORR=0.88, BIAS= $-0.24mm\;hr^{-1}$, NSD=0.41, MRE=37.6%) shows better performances than static HSR without correction of reflectivity calibration bias (CORR=0.87, BIAS= $-2.94mm\;hr^{-1}$, NSD=0.76, MRE=58.4%) for all skill scores. Dynamic HSR technique overestimates surface rainfall at near range whereas it underestimates rainfall at far ranges due to the effects of beam broadening and increasing the radar beam height. In terms of NSD and MRE, dynamic HSR shows the best results regardless of the distance from radar. Static HSR significantly overestimates a surface rainfall at weaker rainfall intensity. However, RATIO of dynamic HSR remains almost 1.0 for all ranges of rainfall intensity. After correcting system bias of reflectivity, NSD and MRE of dynamic HSR are improved by about 20 and 15%, respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2016.05a
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• pp.164-164
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• 2016

Radar rainfall estimates have been widely used in calculating rainfall amount approximately and predicting flood risks. The radar rainfall estimates have a number of error sources such as beam blockage and ground clutter hinder their applications to hydrological flood forecasting. Moreover, it has been reported in paper that those errors are inter-correlated spatially and temporally. Therefore, in the current study, we tested influence about spatio-temporal errors in radar rainfall estimates. Spatio-temporal errors were simulated through a stochastic simulation model, called Multivariate Autoregressive (MAR). For runoff simulation, the Nam River basin in South Korea was used with the distributed rainfall-runoff model, Vflo. The results indicated that spatio-temporal dependent errors caused much higher variations in peak discharge than spatial dependent errors. To further investigate the effect of the magnitude of time correlation among radar errors, different magnitudes of temporal correlations were employed during the rainfall-runoff simulation. The results indicated that strong correlation caused a higher variation in peak discharge. This concluded that the effects on reducing temporal and spatial correlation must be taken in addition to correcting the biases in radar rainfall estimates. Acknowledgements This research was supported by a grant from a Strategic Research Project (Development of Flood Warning and Snowfall Estimation Platform Using Hydrological Radars), which was funded by the Korea Institute of Construction Technology.

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

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.38 no.12 s.161
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• pp.1039-1049
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• 2005

The objective of this study is to produce optimal radar-derived rainfall for hydrologic utilization. The ground clutter and beam blockage effects from Mt. Kwanak station (E.L 608m) are removed from radar reflectivities by POD analysis. The reflectivities are used to produce radar rainfall data in the form of rain rates (mm/h) by the application of the Marshall-Palmer reflectivity versus rainfall relationship. However, these radar-derived rainfall are underestimated in temporal and spatial scale compared with observed one, so it is necessary to hire a correction scheme based on the gauge-to-radar (G/R) statistical adjustment technique. The selected watershed for studying the real-time correction of radar-rainfall estimation is the Soyang dam site, which is located approximately 100km east of Kwanak radar station. The results indicate that adjusted radar rainfall with the gauge measurement have reasonal G/R ratio ranged on 0.95-1.32 and less uncertainty with that mean standard deviation of G/R ratio are decreased by $9-28\%$. Mean areal precipitation from adjusted radar rainfall are well agreed to the observed one on the Soyang River watershed. It is concluded that the real-time bias adjustment scheme is useful to estimate accurate basin-based radar rainfall for hydrologic application.