• Atmosphere
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.267-277
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• 2008

The occurrence and strength of the Asian Dust over the Korea Peninsular have been increased by the expansion of the desert area. For the continuous monitoring of the Asian Dust event, the geostationary satellites provide useful information by detecting the outbreak of the event as well as the long-range transportation of dust. The Infrared Optical Depth Index (IODI) derived from the MTSAT-1R data, indicating a quantitative index of the dust intensity, has been produced in real-time at Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) since spring of 2007 for the forecast of Asian dust. The data processing algorithm for IODI consists of mainly two steps. The first step is to detect dust area by using brightness temperature difference between two thermal window channels which are influenced with different extinction coefficients by dust. Here we use dynamic threshold values based on the change of surface temperature. In the second step, the IODI is calculated using the ratio between current IR1 brightness temperature and the maximum brightness temperature of the last 10 days which we assume the clear sky. Validation with AOD retrieved from MODIS shows a good agreement over the ocean. Comparison of IODI with the ground based PM10 observation network in Korea shows distinct characteristics depending on the altitude of dust layer estimated from the Lidar data. In the case that the altitude of dust layer is relatively high, the intensity of IODI is larger than that of PM10. On the other hand, when the altitude of dust layer is lower, IODI seems to be relatively small comparing with PM10 measurement.

• Atmosphere
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.13-28
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• 2012

The $PM_{10}$ concentration data is useful for indentifying intensity and a transport way of Asian dust. However, it is difficult to identify them properly due to the limited spatial resolution and coverage. Therefore, a methodology to estimate $PM_{10}$ concentration using visibility data obtained from synoptic observation was developed. To derive the converting function, correlation between visibility and $PM_{10}$ concentration is investigated using visibility and $PM_{10}$ concentration data observed at 20 stations in Korea from 2005 to 2009. To minimize bias due to atmospheric moisture, data with higher relative humidity over a critical value were eliminated while deriving $PM_{10}$-visibility relationship. As a result, an exponentially decreasing function of visibility is obtained under the condition that relative humidity is less than 82%. Verification of the visibility converting function to $PM_{10}$ concentration was carried out for the dust cases in 2010. It was found that spatial distributions of $PM_{10}$ calculated by visibility are in good agreement with the observed $PM_{10}$ distribution, especially for the strong dust cases in 2010. And correlation between the derived and observed $PM_{10}$ concentration was 0.63. We applied the function to obtain distributions of $PM_{10}$ concentration over North Korea, in which concentration data are not available, and compared them with satellite derived dust index, IODI distributions for dust cases in 2010. It is shown that the visibility function estimates quite similar patterns of dust concentration with IODI image, which suggests that it can contribute for prediction by indentifying transport route of Asian dust.