• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.21-30
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• 2010

In this study, vulnerability of water resources to climate change was assessed in terms of flood, drought and water management. Criteria and indicators were employed for assessing the vulnerability. The criteria used to assess the vulnerability was sensitivity of the study area, the exposure to climate and the adaptability to climate change. These criteria were quantified and standardized using corresponding indicators. Vulnerability of water resources to climate change is assessed to be generally increasing over time. The appropriate watershed scales are the large drainage basin for national level vulnerability assessment and the small drainage basin for local one.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.159-175
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• 2013

Emission reduction targets to respond to climate change have been discussed and set locally, nationally and globally. After Korean government set the national target in 2009, 16 metropolitan cities established voluntary emission reduction targets by 2020. This study review and compare historical greenhouse gas emissions, reduction target by 2020 and strategies in 16 metropolitan cities. Most cities chose a consumption-based inventory approach. Some cities set the reduction target excluding land use change and forestry (LUCF) at 30% against business-as-usual by 2020, while others set the absolute reduction target against past year including LUCF. The stringency of reduction target in metropolitan cities was evaluated differently according to the comparative indicators such as the targets against BAU or past year and per capita emission, etc. Key mitigation sectors were different across metropolitan cities. It is suggested that national government share detailed raw data for metropolitan cities' emission inventory with the local government. Using advanced mitigation model and two types' target based on BAU and historical year and integrating local government's climate change plan with its energy plan are also required.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.95-104
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• 2013

Average cumulative precipitation in summer have increased by 350 mm compared with 1980s. As precipitation is expected to increase, the risk of landslides by heavy rainfall also is expected to rise. Therefore, establishment of adaptation plan for landslides is urgently needed. In 2011, Korea Ministry of Environment(KME) conducted vulnerability assessment to support establishment of adaptation plan for local governments. However, the result of vulnerability assessment had three limitations. First, KME didn't use standard scenario of Korea Meteorological Administration(KMA). Second, They conducted same standardization method for all variables. Third, They derived relative vulnerability which is not quantitative. The purpose of this study is to improve the limitations of existing vulnerability assessment and identify quantitative criteria to ensure scientific reliability. To achieve this purpose, we carried out three ways of advancement. First, application of new climate scenario, which is RCP 8.5 from KMA. Second, improvement of variables of vulnerability assessment. Third, derivation of quantitative criteria of vulnerability. The findings can support establishment of adaptation plan for local governments more effectively.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.14-26
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• 2021

Increase of climate variability due to climate change has paved the way for regional drought monitoring and outlook. In particular, Gimcheon-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do, is suffering from frequent and periodic drought damage as the frequency and magnitude of drought are increasing due to climate change. For this reason, it is necessary to analyze drought characteristics for sub-districts based on water district and calculate the basic low-flow considering climate change. In this study, meteorological and hydrological drought outlook were carried out for 8 sub-districts considering the water supply system and regional characteristics of Gimcheon-si according to various climate change scenarios. In addition, the low-flow frequency analysis for the near future was also performed using the total amount of runoff and the low-flow. The overall results indicated that, meteorological droughts were found to be dangerous in the S0(1974~2019) period and hydrological droughts would be dangerous in the S2(2041~2070) period for RCP 4.5 and in S3(2071~2099) period for RCP 8.5. The results of low-flow frequency analysis indicated that future runoff would increase but drought magnitude and frequency would increase further. The results and methodology may be useful for preparing local governments' drought measures and design standards for local water resources facilities.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-5
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• 2013

Global climate changes affect the local hydrologic cycle, and subsequently, require changes in water resource management strategies of Korea. Variations in precipitation and urbanization have adverse effects on the reasonable and efficient utilization of groundwater resources. Groundwater management strategies of Korea have been implemented based on the evaluation of "sustainable yield", which is calculated from the amount of annual recharge. However, this sustainable yield has no consideration of natural discharge and dynamic equilibrium of the groundwater system. Therefore, for the effective groundwater management strategies of the following decades, we need representative and reliable observations, and have to develop methods for the systematic analysis and interpretations of the data to draw valid information in linkage of natural and societal environmental changes.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.26-36
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• 2020

This study aimed at investigating present research and knowledge-base on climate change adaptation in ecosystem sector and analyzed the current status of basic information on ecosystem that functions as evidence-base of climate change adaptation to deduce the suggestions for the future development for knowledge and information in biodiversity. In this perspective, a questionary survey titled as "the ecological knowledge-base and information needs for climate change adaptation" with the researchers who were engaged with adaptation studies for biodiversity in the ecosystem related-research institutes including national and 17 regional local governments-affiliated agencies in Korea. The results are as follows; current status of utilizing ecological information which supports climate change adaptation strategy, future needs for adaptation knowledge and ecological information, and activation of utilizing ecological information. The majority of respondents (90.7%) replied that the ecological information has high relevance when conducting research on climate change adaptation. However, only half of all respondents (53.2%) agreed with the real viability of current information to the adaptation research. Particularly, urgent priority for researchers was deduced as intensifying knowledge-base and constructing related information on 'ecosystem change from climate change (productivity, community structure, food chain, phenology, range distribution, and number of individuals) with the overall improvement of information contents and its quality. The respondents emphasized with the necessity of conducting field surveys of local ecosystem and constructing ecosystem inventories, advancing monitoring designs for climate change in ecosystem, and case studies for regional ecosystem changes with the guidance or guidelines for monitoring ecosystem change to enhance the quality of adaptation research and produce related information. In terms of activation for ecological information usage, national and local adaptation network should be working based on the integrated ecological platform necessary to support exchanges of knowledge and information and to expand ecosystem types in time and spatial dimension.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.18-18
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• 2011

Climate change is impacting and will increasingly impact both the quantity and quality of the world's water resources in a variety of ways. In some areas warming climate results in increased rainfall, surface runoff, and groundwater recharge while in others there may be declines in all of these. Water quality is described by a number of variables. Some are directly impacted by climate change. Temperature is an obvious example. Notably, increased atmospheric concentrations of $CO_2$ triggering climate change increase the $CO_2$ dissolving into water. This has manifold consequences including decreased pH and increased alkalinity, with resultant increases in dissolved concentrations of the minerals in geologic materials contacted by such water. Climate change is also expected to increase the number and intensity of extreme climate events, with related hydrologic changes. A simple framework has been developed in New Zealand for assessing and predicting climate change impacts on water resources. Assessment is largely based on trend analysis of historic data using the non-parametric Mann-Kendall method. Trend analysis requires long-term, regular monitoring data for both climate and hydrologic variables. Data quality is of primary importance and data gaps must be avoided. Quantitative prediction of climate change impacts on the quantity of water resources can be accomplished by computer modelling. This requires the serial coupling of various models. For example, regional downscaling of results from a world-wide general circulation model (GCM) can be used to forecast temperatures and precipitation for various emissions scenarios in specific catchments. Mechanistic or artificial intelligence modelling can then be used with these inputs to simulate climate change impacts over time, such as changes in streamflow, groundwater-surface water interactions, and changes in groundwater levels. The Waimea Plains catchment in New Zealand was selected for a test application of these assessment and prediction methods. This catchment is predicted to undergo relatively minor impacts due to climate change. All available climate and hydrologic databases were obtained and analyzed. These included climate (temperature, precipitation, solar radiation and sunshine hours, evapotranspiration, humidity, and cloud cover) and hydrologic (streamflow and quality and groundwater levels and quality) records. Results varied but there were indications of atmospheric temperature increasing, rainfall decreasing, streamflow decreasing, and groundwater level decreasing trends. Artificial intelligence modelling was applied to predict water usage, rainfall recharge of groundwater, and upstream flow for two regionally downscaled climate change scenarios (A1B and A2). The AI methods used were multi-layer perceptron (MLP) with extended Kalman filtering (EKF), genetic programming (GP), and a dynamic neuro-fuzzy local modelling system (DNFLMS), respectively. These were then used as inputs to a mechanistic groundwater flow-surface water interaction model (MODFLOW). A DNFLMS was also used to simulate downstream flow and groundwater levels for comparison with MODFLOW outputs. MODFLOW and DNFLMS outputs were consistent. They indicated declines in streamflow on the order of 21 to 23% for MODFLOW and DNFLMS (A1B scenario), respectively, and 27% in both cases for the A2 scenario under severe drought conditions by 2058-2059, with little if any change in groundwater levels.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.57-68
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• 2010

Increase in greenhouse gas emissions during the last century has led to remarkable changes in our environment and climate system. Many policy measures have been developed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the world, many of which require our lifestyle changes from energy-intensive to energy-saving. One of the changes in our living patterns is to consider food miles. A food mile is the distance food travels from where it is produced to where it is consumed. Providing information of food miles will help people choose low mileage food, helping promote a "green consumption" action and lead to a low carbon society with emission reduction systems. In this study, 10 items are selected from 23 Harmonized commodity description and 2-digit coding system (HS) to estimate their food miles, and $CO_2$ emissions released in the transportation of imported food. For the estimation, four countries are chosen-Korea, Japan, United Kingdom (UK) and France, with Korea and Japan's 2001, 2003, and 2007 trade statistics and UK and France's 2003 and 2007 trade statistics used. As a result, Korea showed in 2007 the highest level of food miles and $CO_2$ emissions per capita among 4 countries. That suggests that Korea should make an effort to purchase local food to reduce food miles and use low-carbon vehicles for food transport, contributing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

• 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.

• Journal of Conservation Science
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.437-448
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• 2016

Studies on vulnerability of cultural heritage and adaptation strategy to worldwide climate change have been actively carried out in advanced countries since the late 20th century, and this established a valid research methodology and piled up climate and deterioration dataset in the field of climate change. Meanwhile, we still have tasks to acquire related scientific data despite referencing political researches in Korea. Applying Korean future climate to impact analysis, deterioration of Korean stone heritage is likely prospected to change into complexity in terms of physical, chemical and biological weathering that may bring impacts on conservation business and administrative field of cultural heritage. Further studies will ensure detailed implication of climate change impact on Korean stone heritage by means of down-scaling analysis of areas to local scale and dataset frequency to an hour. It is important to sort out capability and vulnerability of the stone heritage to future environment, and to make an adaption and prevention strategies.