• Atmosphere
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.197-208
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• 2011

The objective of this study is to describe the short-range forecast system of the Korea Air Force (KAF) and to verificate its performace in 2009 summer. The KAF weather prediction model system, based on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model (i.e., the KAF-WRF), is configured with a parent domain overs East Asia and two nested domains with the finest horizontal grid size of 2 km. Each domain covers the Korean peninsula and South Korea, respectively. The model is integrated for 84 hour 4 times a day with the initial and boundary conditions from National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Global Forecast System (GFS) data. A quantitative verification system is constructed for the East Asia and Korean peninsula domains. Verification variables for the East Asia domain are 500 hPa temperature, wind and geopotential height fields, and the skill score is calculated using the difference between the analysis data from the NCEP GFS model and the forecast data of the KAF-WRF model results. Accuracy of precipitation for the Korean penisula domain is examined using the contingency table that is made of the KAF-WRF model results and the KMA (Korea Meteorological Administraion) AWS (Automatic Weather Station) data. Using the verification system, the operational model and parallel model with updated version of the WRF model and improved physics process are quantitatively evaluated for the 2009 summer. Over the East Aisa region, the parallel experimental model shows the better performance than the operation model. Errors of the experimental model in 500 hPa geopotential height near the Tibetan plateau are smaller than errors in the operational model. Over the Korean peninsula, verification of precipitation prediction skills shows that the performance of the operational model is better than that of the experimental one in simulating light precipitation. However, performance of experimental one is generally better than that of operational one, in prediction.