Monitoring of Climate Change of Northeast Asia and Background Atmosphere in Korea

In general, the parameters of climate change include aerosol chemical compounds, aerosol optical depth, greenhouse gases(carbon dioxide, CFCs, methane, nitrous oxide, tropospheric ozone), ozone distribution, precipitation acidity and chemical compounds, persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals, radioactivity, solar radiation including ultra-violet and standard meteorological parameters. Over the last ten years, the monitoring activities of Korea regarding to the climate change have been progressed within the WMO GAW and ACE-Asia IOP programs centered at the observation sites of Anmyeon and Jeju Gosan islands respectively. The Greenhouse gases were pointed out that standard air quality monitoring techniques are required to enhance data comparability and that data presentation formats need to be harmonized and easily understood. Especially, the impact of atmospheric aerosols on climate depends on their optical properties, which, in turn, are a function of aerosol size distribution and the spectral reflective indices. Aerosol optical depth and single scattering albedo in the visible are used as the two basic parameters in the atmospheric temperature variation studies. The former parameter is an indicator of the attenuation power of aerosols, while the latter represents the relative strength of scattering and absorption by aerosols. For aerosols with weak absorption, surface temperature decreases as the optical depth increases because of the domination of backscattering. For aerosols with strong absorption, however, warming could occur as the optical depth increases. The objective of the study is to characterize the means, variability, and trends of Greenhouse gases and aerosol properties on a regional basis using data from its baseline observatories in Korea peninsula. A further goal is to understand the factors that control radiative forcing of the greenhouse and aerosol.