Holding the longest observation data from April 1904, Busan is one of the essential points to understand the climate variability of the Korean Peninsula without missing data since implementing the modern weather observation of the South Korea. Busan is featured by coastal areas and affected by various climate factors and fluctuations. This study aims to investigate climate variability and changes in climatic variables, extremes, and several weather indexes. The statistically significant change points in daily mean rainfall intensity and temperature were found in 1964 and 1965. Based on the change point detection, 117 years were divided into two periods for daily mean rainfall intensity and temperature, respectively. In the long-term temperature analysis of Busan, the increasing trend of the daily maximum temperature during the period of 1965~2021 was larger than the daily mean temperature and the daily minimum temperature. Applying Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition, daily maximum temperature is largely affected by the decadal variability compared to the daily mean and minimum temperature. In addition, the trend of daily precipitation intensity from 1964~2021 shows a value of about 0.50 mm day^-1, suggesting that the rainfall intensity has increased compared to the preceding period. The results in extremes analysis demonstrate that return values of both extreme temperatures and precipitation show higher values in the latter than in the former period, indicating that the intensity of the current extreme phenomenon increases. For Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature (effective humidity), increasing (decreasing) trend is significant in Busan with the second (third)-largest change among four stations.

Characteristics of downslope windstorm (DW) has been examined mainly based on 1-min average wind and the other meteorological conditions in the Yeongdong region for 2000~2020. First, a classification procedure for the downslope windstorm is proposed using surface wind speed (greater than 99 percentile), 1-hour longevity of strong wind (SW), westerly wind direction, low humidity (less than 20 percentile), and leeside warming. The number of DW days satisfying the proposed criteria is 221 (2.9% of total days and 47.5% of SW days) while the number of SW days is 465 (6.1% of total days) for 2000~2020. The occurrences of both SW and DW shows distinctive annual variation with its peak in April. In addition, mean wind speed of DW days is 8.2 m s^-1 with its duration of 2 hr 30 min and relative humidity of 28% at Gangneung. An episode (7 May 2021) was selected by applying the proposed criteria to SW days of 2021. The sounding shows that the layer of wind speed greater than 25 m s^-1 was lowered down to 925 hPa at Gangneung (leeside) relative to 850 hPa at Hoengseong (Wonju), in the afternoon along with significant warming and drying. Froude numbers of Wonju and Gangneung for the DW events were increased 4 and 5 times greater than those of normal days, respectively. This kind of DW long-term statistics in the leeside of the mountains is thought to build a foundation of further understanding DW mechanism.

In this study, for the application of observation errors to the Korean Integrated Model (KIM) to utilize the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere & Climate-2 (COSMIC-2) new satellites, the observation errors were diagnosed based on the Desroziers method using the cost function in the process of variational data assimilation. We calculated observation errors for all observational species being utilized for KIM and compared with their relative values. The observation error of the calculated the Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation (GNSS RO) was about six times smaller than that of other satellites. In order to balance with other satellites, we conducted two experiments in which the GNSS RO data expanded by about twice the observation error. The performance of the analysis field was significantly improved in the tropics, where the COSMIC-2 data are more available, and in the Southern Hemisphere, where the influence of GNSS RO data is significantly greater. In particular, the prediction performance of the Southern Hemisphere was improved by doubling the observation error in global region, rather than doubling the COSMIC-2 data only in areas with high density, which seems to have been balanced with other observations.

Blocking refers to a class of weather phenomena appearing in the mid and high latitudes, whose characteristics are blocked airflow of persistence. Frequently found over the Pacific and Atlantic regions of the Northern Hemisphere, blocking affects severe weather in the surrounding areas with different mechanisms depending on the type of blocking patterns. Along with lots of studies about persistent weather extremes focusing on the specific types of blocking, a new categorization using Rossby wave breaking has emerged. This study aims to apply this concept to the classification of blockings over the Pacific and examine how different wave breakings specify the associated cold weather in the Korean peninsula. At the same time, we investigate a strongly developing ridge around the Pacific by designing a new detection algorithm, where a reversal method is modified to distinguish ridge-type blocking patterns. As result, Kamchatka blocking (KB) and strong ridge over the Central Pacific are observed the most frequently during 20 years (2001~2020) of the studied period, and anomalous low pressures with cold air over the Korean Peninsula are accompanied by blocking events. When it considers the Rossby wave breaking, cyclonic wave-breaking is dominant in KB, which generates low-pressure anomalies over the Korean Peninsula. However, KB with anticyclone wave breaking appears with the high-pressure anomalies over the Korean Peninsula and it generates the warm temperature anomaly. Lastly, the low-pressure anomalies are also generated by the strong ridge over the Central Pacific, which persists for approximately three days and give a significant impact on cold surge on the Korean Peninsula.

Accurate estimation of forest carbon stocks is important in establishing greenhouse gas reduction plans. In this study, we estimate the spatial distribution of forest carbon stocks using machine learning techniques based on high-resolution remote sensing data and detailed field survey data. The high-resolution remote sensing data used in this study are Landsat indices (EVI, NDVI, NDII) for monitoring vegetation vitality and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data for describing topography. We also used the forest growing stock data from the National Forest Inventory (NFI) for estimating forest biomass. Based on these data, we built a model based on machine learning methods and optimized for Korean forest types to calculate the forest carbon stocks per grid unit. With the newly developed estimation model, we created forest carbon stocks maps and estimated the forest carbon stocks in South Korea. As a result, forest carbon stock in South Korea was estimated to be 432,214,520 tC in 2020. Furthermore, we estimated the loss of forest carbon stocks due to the Donghae-Uljin forest fire in 2022 using the forest carbon stock map in this study. The surrounding forest destroyed around the fire area was estimated to be about 24,835 ha and the loss of forest carbon stocks was estimated to be 1,396,457 tC. Our model serves as a tool to estimate spatially distributed local forest carbon stocks and facilitates accounting of real-time changes in the carbon balance as well as managing the LULUCF part of greenhouse gas inventories.