• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.393-404
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• 2022

Reliable terrestrial rainfall observations from satellites at finer spatial resolution are essential for urban hydrological and microscale agricultural demands. Although various traditional "top-down" approach-based satellite rainfall products were widely used, they are limited in spatial resolution. This study aims to assess the potential of a novel "bottom-up" approach for rainfall estimation, the parameterized SM2RAIN model, applied to the C-band SAR Sentinel-1 satellite data (SM2RAIN-S1), to generate high-spatial-resolution terrestrial rainfall estimates (0.01° grid/6-day) over Central South Korea. Its performance was evaluated for both spatial and temporal variability using the respective rainfall data from a conventional reanalysis product and rain gauge network for a 1-year period over two different sub-regions in Central South Korea-the mixed forest-dominated, middle sub-region and cropland-dominated, west coast sub-region. Evaluation results indicated that the SM2RAIN-S1 product can capture general rainfall patterns in Central South Korea, and hold potential for high-spatial-resolution rainfall measurement over the local scale with different land covers, while less biased rainfall estimates against rain gauge observations were provided. Moreover, the SM2RAIN-S1 rainfall product was better in mixed forests considering the Pearson's correlation coefficient (R = 0.69), implying the suitability of 6-day SM2RAIN-S1 data in capturing the temporal dynamics of soil moisture and rainfall in mixed forests. However, in terms of RMSE and Bias, better performance was obtained with the SM2RAIN-S1 rainfall product over croplands rather than mixed forests, indicating that larger errors induced by high evapotranspiration losses (especially in mixed forests) need to be included in further improvement of the SM2RAIN.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.361-365
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• 2002

Rain-rate retrieval using the NOAA/AMSU (Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit) (Zaho et al., 2001) has been implemented at METRI/KMA since 2001. Here, we present the results of the AMSU derived rain-rate and validation result, especially for the rainfall associated with the tropical cyclone for 2001. For the validation, we use rain-rate derived from the ground based radar and/or rainfall observation from the rain gauge in Korea. We estimate the bias score, threat score, bias, RMSE and correlation coefficient for total of 16 tropical cyclone cases. Bias score shows around 1.3 and it increases with the increasing threshold value of rain-rate, while the threat score extends from 0.4 to 0.6 with the increasing threshold value of precipitation. The averaged rain-rate for at all 16 cases is 3.96mm/hr and 1.41mm/hr for the retrieved from AMSU and the ground observation, respectively. On the other hand, AMSU rain-rate shows a much better agreement with the ground based observation over inner part of tropical cyclone than over the outer part (Correlation coefficient for convective region is about 0.7, while it is only about 0.3 over the stratiform region). The larger discrepancy of tile correlation coefficient with the different part of the tropical cyclone is partly due to the time difference in between ice water path and surface rainfall. This results indicates that it might be better to develop the algorithm for different rain classes such as convective and stratiform.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.17 no.11
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• pp.2745-2752
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• 2013

The tipping-bucket and weight measuring type precipitation gauge has long been used worldwide for measuring rainfall. However, the conventional gauge has observation errors and its measurement range is limited by the device's resolution. In this paper, a new type of precipitation gauge that uses an innovative method by applying a new ultrasonic flow measuring technique was developed. This is the first time this technique is being used to gauge rainfall. The prototype was tested in the laboratory designated by the Korea Laboratory Accreditation Scheme (KOLAS). The rainfall intensity condition was 20~420 mm/H and the Standard Correction System for Precipitation Gauges was used. Results of the laboratory experiment showed that the proposed gauge has a ${\pm}2%$ margin of error. Consequently, it was proven that the proposed gauge is quite accurate and reliable for measuring precipitation.

• Atmosphere
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.283-294
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• 2015

For urban flash flood simulation, we need the higher resolution radar rainfall than radar rainfall of KMA, which has 10 min time and 1km spatial resolution, because the area of subbasins is almost below $1km^2$. Moreover, we have to secure the high quantitative accuracy for considering the urban hydrological model that is sensitive to rainfall input. In this study, we developed the quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE), which has 250 m spatial resolution and high accuracy using KMA AWS and SK Planet stations with Mt. Gwangdeok radar data in Seoul area. As the results, the rainfall field using KMA AWS (QPE1) is showed high smoothing effect and the rainfall field using Mt. Gwangdeok radar is lower estimated than other rainfall fields. The rainfall field using KMA AWS and SK Planet (QPE2) and conditional merged rainfall field (QPE4) has high quantitative accuracy. In addition, they have small smoothed area and well displayed the spatial variation of rainfall distribution. In particular, the quantitative accuracy of QPE4 is slightly less than QPE2, but it has been simulated well the non-homogeneity of the spatial distribution of rainfall.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2021.06a
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• pp.132-132
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• 2021

Access to accurate spatial precipitation in many hydrological studies is necessary. Existence of many mountains with diverse topography in South Korea causes different spatial distribution of precipitation. Rain gauge stations show accurate precipitation information in points, but due to the limited use of rain gauge stations and the difficulty of accessing them, there is not enough accurate information in the whole area. Weather radars can provide an integrated precipitation information spatially. Despite this, weather radar data have some errors that can not provide accurate data, especially in heavy rainfall. In this study, some location-based variable like aspect, elevation, plan curvature, profile curvature, slope and distance from the sea which has most effect on rainfall was considered. Then Automatic Weather Station data was used for spatial training of variables in each event. According to this, K-fold cross-validation method was combined with Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System. Based on this, 80% of Automatic Weather Station data was used for training and validation of model and 20% was used for testing and evaluation of model. Finally, spatial distribution of precipitation for 1×1 km resolution in Gwangdeoksan radar station was estimates. The results showed a significant decrease in RMSE and an increase in correlation with the observed amount of precipitation.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2021.06a
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• pp.183-183
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• 2021

Deep learning methods and their application have become an essential part of prediction and modeling in water-related research areas, including hydrological processes, climate change, etc. It is known that application of deep learning leads to high availability of data sources in hydrology, which shows its usefulness in analysis of precipitation, runoff, groundwater level, evapotranspiration, and so on. However, there is still a limitation on microclimate analysis and prediction with deep learning methods because of deficiency of gauge-based data and shortcomings of existing technologies. In this study, a real-time rainfall prediction model was developed from a sky image data set with convolutional neural networks (CNNs). These daily image data were collected at Chung-Ang University and Korea University. For high accuracy of the proposed model, it considers data classification, image processing, ratio adjustment of no-rain data. Rainfall prediction data were compared with minutely rainfall data at rain gauge stations close to image sensors. It indicates that the proposed model could offer an interpolation of current rainfall observation system and have large potential to fill an observation gap. Information from small-scaled areas leads to advance in accurate weather forecasting and hydrological modeling at a micro scale.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.245-255
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• 2015

This study used high density network of integrated meteorological sensor, which are operated by SK Planet, with KMA weather stations to estimate the quantitative precipitation field in Seoul area. We introduced SK Planet network and analyzed quality of the observed data for 3 months data from 1 July to 30 September 2013. As the quality analysis result, we checked most SK Planet stations observed similar with previous KMA stations. We developed the real-time quality check and adjustment method to reduce the error effect for hydrological application by missing and outlier value and we confirmed the developed method can be corrected the missing and outlier value. Through this method, we used the 190 stations(KMA 34 stations, SK Planet 156 stations) that missing ratio is less than 20% and the effect of the outlier was the smallest for quantitative precipitation estimation. Moreover, we evaluated reproducibility of rainfall field high density rain gauge network has $3km^2$/gauge. As the result, the spatial relative frequency of rainfall field using SK Planet and KMA stations is similar with radar rainfall field. And, it supplement the blank of KMA observation network. Especially, through this research we will take advantage of the density of the network to estimate rainfall field which can be considered as a very good approximation of the true value.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.41 no.7
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• pp.681-692
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• 2008

This study investigated the application of the successive correction method(SCM), a simple data assimilation method, for synthesizing the radar and rain gauge data. First, the number of iteration and influence radius for the SCM application were decided based on their sensitivity analysis. Also, for the evaluation of synthetic rainfall, the distributed rainfall field using the dense rainfall gauge network was assumed to be the true one. The synthetic rainfall field based on the SCM was also compared quantitatively with the one based on the co-Kriging frequently used nowadays. As the results, the SCM, a simple and economical data assimilation method, was found to secure the accuracy and statistical characteristics of the co-Kriging application.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.329-329
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• 2022

Accurate characterization of terrestrial precipitation variation from high spatial resolution satellite sensors is beneficial for urban hydrology and microscale agriculture modeling, as well as natural disasters (e.g., urban flooding) early warning. However, the widely-used top-down approach for precipitation retrieval from microwave satellites is limited in several hydrological and agricultural applications due to their coarse spatial resolution. In this research, we aim to apply a novel bottom-up method, the parameterized SM2RAIN, where precipitation can be estimated from soil moisture signals based on an inversion of water balance model, to generate high spatial resolution terrestrial precipitation estimates at 0.01º grid (roughly 1-km) from the C-band SAR Sentinel-1. This product was then tested against a common reanalysis-based precipitation data and a domestic rain gauge network from the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA) over central South Korea, since a clear difference between climatic types (coasts and mainlands) and land covers (croplands and mixed forests) was reported in this area. The results showed that seasonal precipitation variability strongly affected the SM2RAIN performances, and the product derived from separated parameters (rainy and non-rainy seasons) outperformed that estimated considering the entire year. In addition, the product retrieved over the mainland mixed forest region showed slightly superior performance compared to that over the coastal cropland region, suggesting that the 6-day time resolution of S1 data is suitable for capturing the stable precipitation pattern in mainland mixed forests rather than the highly variable precipitation pattern in coastal croplands. Future studies suggest comparing this product to the traditional top-down products, as well as evaluating their integration for enhancing high spatial resolution precipitation over entire South Korea.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.153-153
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• 2022

Large-scale and accurate observations at fine spatial resolution through a means of remote sensing offer an effective tool for capturing rainfall variability over the traditional rain gauges and weather radars. Although satellite rainfall products (SRPs) derived using two major estimation approaches were evaluated worldwide, their practical applications suffered from limitations. In particular, the traditional top-down SRPs (e.g., IMERG), which are based on direct estimation of rain rate from microwave satellite observations, are mainly restricted with their coarse spatial resolution, while applications of the bottom-up approach, which allows backward estimation of rainfall from soil moisture signals, to novel high spatial resolution soil moisture satellite sensors over South Korea are not introduced. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the performances of a state-of-the-art bottom-up SRP (the self-calibrated SM2RAIN model) applied to the C-band SAR Sentinel-1, a statistically downscaled version of the conventional top-down IMERG SRP, and their integration for a targeted high spatial resolution of 0.01° (~ 1-km) over central South Korea, where the differences in climate zones (coastal region vs. mainland region) and vegetation covers (croplands vs. mixed forests) are highlighted. The results indicated that each single SRP can provide plus points in distinct climatic and vegetated conditions, while their drawbacks have existed. Superior performance was obtained by merging these individual SRPs, providing preliminary results on a complementary high spatial resolution SRP over central South Korea. This study results shed light on the further development of integration framework and a complementary high spatial resolution rainfall product from multi-satellite sensors as well as multi-observing systems (integrated gauge-radar-satellite) extending for entire South Korea, toward the demands for urban hydrology and microscale agriculture.