• Atmosphere
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.55-68
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• 2007

Future climate changes over East Asia are projected by anthropogenic forcing of greenhouse gases and aerosols using ECHO-G/S (ECHAM4/HOPE-G). Climate simulation in the 21st century is conducted with three standard SRES scenarios (A1B, B1, and A2) and the model performance is assessed by the 20th Century (20C3M) experiment. From the present climate simulation (20C3M), the model reproduced reliable climate state in the most fields, however, cold bias in temperature and dry bias of summer in precipitation occurred. The intercomparison among models using Taylor diagram indicates that ECHO-G/S exhibits smaller mean bias and higher pattern correlation than other nine AOGCMs. Based on SRES scenarios, East Asia will experience warmer and wetter climate in the coming 21st century. Changes of geographical patterns from the present to the future are considerably similar through all the scenarios except for the magnitude difference. The temperature in winter and precipitation in summer show remarkable increase. In spite of the large uncertainty in simulating precipitation by regional scale, we found that the summer (winter) precipitation at eastern coast (north of $40^{\circ}N$) of East Asia has significantly increased. In the 21st century, the warming over the continents of East Asia showed much more increase than that over the ocean. Hence, more enhanced (weakened) land-sea thermal contrast over East Asia in summer (winter) will cause strong (weak) monsoon. In summer, the low pressure located in East Asia becomes deeper and the moisture from the south or southeast is transported more into the land. These result in increasing precipitation amount over East Asia, especially at the coastal region. In winter, the increase (decrease) of precipitation is accompanied by strengthening (weakening) of baroclinicity over the land (sea) of East Asia.

• Atmosphere
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.111-130
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• 2010

An uncertainty assessment for precipitation datasets simulated by Atmosphere-Ocean Coupled General Circulation Model (AOGCM) is conducted to provide reliable climate scenario over East Asia. Most of results overestimate precipitation compared to the observational data (wet bias) in spring-fall-winter, while they underestimate precipitation (dry bias) in summer in East Asia. Higher spatial resolution model shows better performances in simulation of precipitation. To assess the uncertainty of spatiotemporal precipitation in East Asia, the cyclostationary empirical orthogonal function (CSEOF) analysis is applied. An annual cycle of precipitation obtained from the CSEOF analysis accounts for the biggest variability in its total variability. A comparison between annual cycles of observed and modeled precipitation anomalies shows distinct differences: 1) positive precipitation anomalies of the multi-model ensemble (MME) for 20 models (thereafter MME20) in summer locate toward the north compared to the observational data so that it cannot explain summer monsoon rainfalls across Korea and Japan. 2) The onset of summer monsoon in MME20 in Korean peninsula starts earlier than observed one. These differences show the uncertainty of modeled precipitation. Also the comparison provides the criteria of annual cycle and correlation between modeled and observational data which helps to select best models and generate a new MME, which is better than the MME20. The spatiotemporal deviation of precipitation is significantly associated with lower-level circulations. In particular, lower-level moisture transports from the warm pool of the western Pacific and corresponding moisture convergence significantly are strongly associated with summer rainfalls. These lower-level circulations physically consistent with precipitation give insight into description of the reason in the monsoon of East Asia why behaviors of individually modeled precipitation differ from that of observation.

• 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.17 no.3
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• pp.241-253
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• 2007

This paper investigates summer precipitation change in East Asia according to switching surface boundary condition over South Korea and Shantung. Simulations are carried out by ECHO-G/S for 20 years (1980-1999). Surface condition over both areas in ECHO-G/S is represented by ocean (OCN experiment). In OCN experiment, the summer precipitation is considerably underestimated around the Korean peninsula (the dry region) and overestimated over the eastern Tibetan Plateau (the wet region). It may be related that the lack of the heat sources from the unrealistically prescribed land-sea mask weakens northward expansion of rainband and the development of convective precipitation. Moreover the simulated rainband retreats before June in connection with the early genesis of summer monsoon circulation. The systematic bias of the summer precipitation over the dry and wet regions are reduced comparing with the OCN experiment when the land-sea masks over South Korea and Shantung are realistically considered as land (LND experiment). These improvements can be explained by the thermodynamical dissimilarity between land and ocean. Enhanced warming by switching the areas from sea to land has led to develop the thermal low over Yellow Sea with the cyclonic circulation. Thus, this cyclonic circulation supports moistures from the south to the dry region and blocks to the wet region. The heat transport from the land surface to atmosphere plays a key role in the developing convective precipitation in local scale and maintaining the precipitation and the rainband. Therefore, this results indicate that the design of the realistic land-sea distribution is required for the accurate simulation of the regional precipitation.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.345-356
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• 1995

Examining the precipitation data collected during the period from 1960 to 1993, we found that Taegu Station represents an optimum station for explaining the interannual variations of the precipitation in Korea. Using the variations derived from Taegu, the secular trends of the precipitation in Korea have been studied. It was 삽so found that the interannual variations of summer monsoon precipitation are consistent with those of the annual precipitation. To explore the interannual variations of the summer monsoon precipitation, comparisons of the summer precipitation in Korea with that in China and Japan were made. The results of the empirical orthogonal function analysis showed that Korea, the Yangtze River and Huaihe River valley, and the south Japan are all located in the same climate system during summer. The detailed analysis was carried out on the comparison of the summer precipitation in Korea with that in the eastern part of the the mainland China. We found that the correlation pattern is similar to the East Asia/pacific pattern. The probable effects of the sea surface temperature on the precipitation in Korea were also discussed. Key Words : Precipitation in Korea, rainy seasons in East Asia, monsoon precipitation, interannual variations.

• Atmosphere
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.403-417
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• 2014

Future changes in seasonal mean temperature and precipitation over East Asia under anthropogenic global warming are investigated by comparing the historical run for 1979~2005 and the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 run for 2006~2100 with 20 coupled models which participated in the phase five of Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP5). Although an increase in future temperature over the East Asian monsoon region has been commonly accepted, the prediction of future precipitation under global warming still has considerable uncertainties with a large inter-model spread. Thus, we select best five models, based on the evaluation of models' performance in present climate for boreal summer and winter seasons, to reduce uncertainties in future projection. Overall, the CMIP5 models better simulate climatological temperature and precipitation over East Asia than the phase 3 of CMIP and the five best models' multi-model ensemble (B5MME) has better performance than all 20 models' multi-model ensemble (MME). Under anthropogenic global warming, significant increases are expected in both temperature and land-ocean thermal contrast over the entire East Asia region during both seasons for near and long term future. The contrast of future precipitation in winter between land and ocean will decrease over East Asia whereas that in summer particularly over the Korean Peninsula, associated with the Changma, will increase. Taking into account model validation and uncertainty estimation, this study has made an effort on providing a more reliable range of future change for temperature and precipitation particularly over the Korean Peninsula than previous studies.

• Atmosphere
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.553-563
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• 2016

Land evaporation contribution to precipitation over East Asia is studied to understand terrestrial moisture source of continental precipitation. Moisture recycling of precipitation relying on terrestrial evaporation is estimated based on the analysis method of Van der Ent et al. (2010). We utilize HadGEM2-AO simulations for the period of 1970~1999 and 2070~2099 from RCP8.5. Globally, 46% of terrestrial precipitation is depending from continental evaporation. 58% of terrestrial evaporation returns as continental precipitation. Over East Asia, precipitation has been affected by local evaporation and transported moisture. The advection of upwind continental evaporation results from the prevailing westerlies from the midwestern of Eurasian continent. For the present-day period, about 66% of the precipitation over the land of East Asia originates from land evaporation. Regionally, the ratios change and the ratios of precipitation terrestrial origin over the Northern inland and Southern coast of East Asia are 82% and 48%, respectively. Seasonally, the continental moisture recycling ratio is larger during summer (JJA) than winter (DJF). According to RCP8.5, moisture recycling ratio is expected to change. At the end of the 21st century, the impact of continental moisture sources for precipitation over East Asia is projected to be reduced by about 5% compared to at the end of 20th century. To understand the future changes, moisture residence time change is investigated using depletion and replenishment time.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2004.05b
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• pp.1247-1250
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• 2004

The amount of precipitation during El Nino over Korea increases in Summer and Winter. However, it decreases in Fall, and exhibits not much change in Spring. Especially, the amount of precipitation during September of El Nino year is much less than that of the September of non-El Nino year. The amount of precipitation during El Nino year of October and November shows similar amount of precipitation during non-El Nino year of the same period. The reason for decreasing precipitation in September is related to the weakening of the 2nd rainy season during the development of El Nino over East Asia including Korea. Insufficiency of fall precipitation during El Nino year influences drought in Spring for next year.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.185-195
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• 2023

The prolonged and heavy East Asian summer precipitation in 2020 may have been caused by an enhanced Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), which requires evaluation using forecast models. We examined the performance of GloSea6, an operational forecast model, in predicting the East Asian summer precipitation during July 2020, and investigated the role of MJO in the extreme rainfall event. Two experiments, CON and EXP, were conducted using different convection schemes, 6A and 5A, respectively to simulate various aspects of MJO. The EXP runs yielded stronger forecasts of East Asian precipitation for July 2020 than the CON runs, probably due to the prominent MJO realization in the former experiment. The stronger MJO created stronger moist southerly winds associated with the western North Pacific subtropical high, which led to increased precipitation. The strengthening of the MJO was found to improve the prediction accuracy of East Asian summer precipitation. However, it is important to note that this study does not discuss the impact of changes in the convection scheme on the modulation of MJO. Further research is needed to understand other factors that could strengthen the MJO and improve the forecast.