• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.595-600
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• 2013

In order to spatially interpolate the near-surface temperature (Ta) values, satellite and reanalysis methods were used from previous studies. Accuracy of reanalysis Ta was generally better than that of satellite-based Ta, but spatial resolution of reanalysis Ta was large to use at local scale studies. Our purpose is to evaluate accuracy of reanalysis Ta and satellite-based Ta according to elevation from April 2011 to March 2012 in Northeast Asia that includes various topographic features. In this study, we used reanalysis data that is ERA-Interim produced by European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), and estimated satellite-based Ta using Digital Elevation Meter (DEM), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), difference between brightness temperature of $11{\mu}m$ and $12{\mu}m$, and Land Surface Temperature (LST) data. The DEM data was used as auxiliary data, and observed Ta at 470 meteorological stations was used in order to evaluate accuracy. We confirmed that the accuracy of satellite-based Ta was less accurate than that of ERA-Interim Ta for total data. Results of analyzing according to elevation that was divided nine cases, ERA-Interim Ta showed higher accurate than satellite-based Ta at the low elevation (less than 500 m). However, satellite-based Ta was more accurate than ERA-Interim Ta at the higher elevation from 500 to 3500 m. Also, the width of the upper and lower quartile appeared largely from 2500 to 3500 m. It is clear from these results that ERA-Interim Ta do not consider elevation because of large spatial resolution. Therefore, satellite-based Ta was more effective than ERA-Interim Ta in the regions that is range from 500 m to 3500 m, and satellite-based Ta was recommended at a region of above 2500 m.

• Atmosphere
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.649-663
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• 2016

This study investigates eddy transports in terms of space and time for momentum, heat, and moisture, emphasizing comparison of the results in three reanalysis data sets including ERA-Interim from the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), NCEP2 from the National Center for Environmental Prediction and the Department of Energy (NCEP-DOE), and JRA-55 from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) during boreal winter. The magnitudes for eddy transports of momentum in ERA-Interim are represented as the strongest value in comparison of three data sets, which may be mainly come from that both zonal averaged meridional and zonal wind tend to follow the hierarchy of ERA-Interim, NCEP2, and JRA-55. Whereas in relation to heat and moisture eddy transports, those of NCEP2 are the strongest, implying that zonal averaged air temperature (specific humidity) tend to follow the raking of NCEP2, ERA-Interim, and JRA-55 (NCEP2, JRA-55, and ERA-Interim), except that transient eddy transports for heat in ERA-Interim are the strongest involving both meridional wind and air temperature. The stationary and transient eddy transports in the context of space and time correlation, and intensity of standard deviation demonstrate that the correlation (intensity of standard deviation) influence the structure (magnitude) of eddy transports. The similarity between ERA-Interim and NCEP2 (ERA-Interim and JRA-55) of space correlation (time correlation) closely resembles among three data sets. A resemblance among reanalysis data sets of space correlation is larger than that of time correlation.

• Atmosphere
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.53-59
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• 2019

The quality of troposphere ozone in three reanalysis datasets is evaluated with longterm ozonesonde measurement at Pohang, South Korea. The Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate (MACC), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Interim Reanalysis (ERAI) and Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA2) are particularly examined in terms of the vertical ozone structure, seasonality and long-term trend in the lower troposphere. It turns out that MACC shows the smallest biases in the ozone profile, and has realistic seasonality of lower-tropospheric ozone concentration with a maximum ozone mixing ratio in spring and early summer and minimum in winter. MERRA2 also shows reasonably small biases. However, ERAI exhibits significant biases with substantially lower ozone mixing ratio in most seasons, except in mid summer, than the observation. It even fails to reproduce the seasonal cycle of lower-tropospheric ozone concentration. This result suggests that great caution is needed when analyzing tropospheric ozone using ERAI data. It is further found that, although not statistically significant, all datasets consistently show a decreasing trend of 850-hPa ozone concentration since 2003 as in the observation.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.6_2
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• pp.1261-1272
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• 2018

It is important to measure the Arctic surface air temperature because it plays a key-role in the exchange of energy between the ocean, sea ice, and the atmosphere. Although in-situ observations provide accurate measurements of air temperature, they are spatially limited to show the distribution of Arctic surface air temperature. In this study, we proposed machine learning-based models to estimate the Arctic surface air temperature in summer based on buoy data and Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2)satellite data. Two machine learning approaches-random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM)-were used to estimate the air temperature twice a day according to AMSR2 observation time. Both RF and SVM showed $R^2$ of 0.84-0.88 and RMSE of $1.31-1.53^{\circ}C$. The results were compared to the surface air temperature and spatial distribution of the ERA-Interim reanalysis data from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). They tended to underestimate the Barents Sea, the Kara Sea, and the Baffin Bay region where no IABP buoy observations exist. This study showed both possibility and limitations of the empirical estimation of Arctic surface temperature using AMSR2 data.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.285-291
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• 2020

The Noah 3.3 Land Surface Model (LSM) was used to estimate the global soil moisture in this study and these soil moisture datasets were assessed against satellite-based and reanalysis soil moisture products. The Noah 3.3 LSM simulated soil moistures in four soil layers and root-zone soil moistures defined as a depth-weighted average in the first three soil layers (i.e., up to 1.0 m deep). The Noah LSM soil moisture products were then compared with a satellite-based soil moisture dataset (European Space Agency Climate Change Initiatives (ESA CCI) SM v04.4) and reanalysis soil moisture datasets (ERA-interim). In addition, the five major basins (Yangtze, Mekong, Mississippi, Murray-Darling, Amazon) were selected for the assesment with the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)-based Total Water Storage Anomaly (TWSA) and TWS Change (TWSC). The results revealed that high anomaly correlations were found in most of the Asia-Pacific regions including East Asia, South Asia, Australia, and Noth and South America. While the anomaly correlations in the Murray-Darling basin were somewhat low, relatively higher anomaly correlations in the other basins were found. It is concluded that this study can be useful for the development of soil moisture based drought indices and subsequently can be helpful to reduce damages from drought by timely providing an efficacious strategy.

• Atmosphere
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.85-97
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• 2018

This study evaluates the performance of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model in reproducing the present-day (1981~2005) precipitation over Far East Asia and South Korea. The WRF model is configured with 25-km horizontal resolution within the context of the COordinated Regional climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) - East Asia Phase 2. The initial and lateral boundary forcing for the WRF simulation are derived from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast Interim reanalysis. According to our results, WRF model shows a reasonable performance to reproduce the features of precipitation, such as seasonal climatology, annual and inter-annual variabilities, seasonal march of monsoon rainfall and extreme precipitation. In spite of such model's ability to simulate major features of precipitation, systematic biases are found in the downscaled simulation in some sub-regions and seasons. In particular, the WRF model systematically tends to overestimate (underestimate) precipitation over Far East Asia (South Korea), and relatively large biases are evident during the summer season. In terms of inter-annual variability, WRF shows an overall smaller (larger) standard deviation in the Far East Asia (South Korea) compared to observation. In addition, WRF overestimates the frequency and amount of weak precipitation, but underestimates those of heavy precipitation. Also, the number of wet days, the precipitation intensity above the 95 percentile, and consecutive wet days (consecutive dry days) are overestimated (underestimated) over eastern (western) part of South Korea. The results of this study can be used as reference data when providing information about projections of fine-scale climate change over East Asia.

• Atmosphere
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.105-118
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• 2017

This study assesses the performance of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model in reproducing regional climate over CORDEX-East Asia Phase 2 domain with different cumulus parameterization schemes [Kain-Fritch (KF), Betts-Miller-Janjic (BM), and Grell-Devenyi-Ensemble (GD)]. The model is integrated for 27 months from January 1979 to March 1981 and the initial and boundary conditions are derived from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast Interim Reanalysis (ERA-Interim). The WRF model reasonably reproduces the temperature and precipitation characteristics over East Asia, but the regional scale responses are very sensitive to cumulus parameterization schemes. In terms of mean bias, WRF model with BM scheme shows the best performance in terms of summer/winter mean precipitation as well as summer mean temperature throughout the North East Asia. In contrast, the seasonal mean precipitation is generally overestimated (underestimated) by KF (GD) scheme. In addition, the seasonal variation of the temperature and precipitation is well simulated by WRF model, but with an overestimation in summer precipitation derived from KF experiment and with an underestimation in wet season precipitation from BM and GD schemes. Also, the frequency distribution of daily precipitation derived from KF and BM experiments (GD experiment) is well reproduced, except for the overestimation (underestimation) in the intensity range above (less) then $2.5mm\;d^{-1}$. In the case of the amount of daily precipitation, all experiments tend to underestimate (overestimate) the amount of daily precipitation in the low-intensity range < $4mm\;d^{-1}$ (high-intensity range > $12mm\;d^{-1}$). This type of error is largest in the KF experiment.

• Atmosphere
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2020

This study analyzed and compared development mechanisms leading to heat waves of 2016 and 2018 in Korea. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis Interim (ERA Interim) dataset and Automated Surface Observing System data are used for synoptic scale analysis. The synoptic conditions are investigated using geopotential height, temperature, equivalent potential temperature, thickness, potential vorticity, omega, outgoing longwave radiation, and blocking index, etc. Heat waves in South Korea occur in relation to Western North Pacific Subtropical High (WNPSH) pressure system which moves northwestward to East Asia during summer season. Especially in 2018, WNPSH intensified due to strong large-scale circulation associated with convective activities in the Philippine Sea, and moved farther north to Korea when compared to 2016. In addition, the Tibetan high near the tropopause settled over Northern China on top of WNPSH creating a very strong anticyclonic structure in the upper-level over the Korean Peninsula. Unlike 2018, WNPSH was weaker and centered over the East China Sea in 2016. Analysis of blocking indices show wide blocking phenomena over the North Pacific and the Eurasian continent during heat wave event in both years. The strong upper-level ridge which was positioned zonally near 60°N, made the WNPSH over the South Korea stagnant in both years. Analysis of heat wave intensity (HWI) and duration (HWD) show that HWI and HWD in 2018 was both strong leading to extreme high temperatures. In 2016 however, HWI was relatively weak compared to HWD. The longevity of HWD is attributed to atmosphere blocking in the surrounding Eurasian continent.

• Atmosphere
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.301-319
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• 2016

The evolutionary process of the polar low, which caused the heavy snowfall in the East Coast area on 11~12 February 2011, was investigated to describe in detail using synoptic weather charts, satellite imageries, and ERA (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Re-Analysis) -Interim reanalysis data. It was revealed that 1) the polar low was generated over the sea near Busan where a large cyclonic shear in the inverted trough branched from the parent low existed, 2) during the developing and mature stages, there was a convectively unstable region in the lower layer around the polar low and its south side, 3) the polar low was developed in the region where the static stability in the 500~850 hPa layer was the lowest, 4) the result from the budget analysis of the vorticity equation indicated that the increase in the vorticity at the lower atmosphere, where the polar low was located, was dominated mainly by the stretching term, 5) the warm core structure of the polar low was identified in the surface-700 hPa layer during the mature stage, 6) there was a close inverse relationship between a development of the polar low and the height of the dynamic tropopause over the polar low, and 7) for generation and development of the polar low, large-scale circulation systems, such as upper cold low and its combined short wave trough, major low (parent low), and polar air outbreak, should be presented, indicating that the polar low has the nature of the baroclinic disturbance.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.209-221
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• 2018

The characteristics of heat wave events in Seoul are analyzed using weather station data from Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) ERA-Interim reanalysis data from 1979 to 2016. Heat waves are defined as events in the upper 10th percentile of the daily maximum temperatures. The associated synoptic weather patterns are then classified into six clusters through Self-Organizing Map (SOM) analysis for sea-level pressure anomalies in East Asia. Cluster 1 shows an anti-cyclonic circulation and weak troughs in southeast and west of Korea, respectively. This synoptic pattern leads to southeasterly winds that advect warm and moist air to the Korean Peninsula. Both clusters 2 and 3 are associated with southerly winds formed by an anti-cyclonic circulation over the east of Korea and cyclonic circulation over the west of Korea. Cluster 4 shows a stagnant weather pattern with weak winds and strong insolation. Clusters 5 and 6 are associated with F?hn wind resulting from an anti-cyclonic circulation in the north of the Korean Peninsula. In terms of long-term variations, event frequencies of clusters 4 and 5 show increasing and decreasing trends, respectively. However, other clusters do not show any long-term trends, indicating that the mechanisms that drive heat wave events in Seoul have remained constant over the last four decades.