• Asian Journal of Atmospheric Environment
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.59-66
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• 2018

This study aims to evaluate the performance of the Air Quality Model (AQM) for the seasonal and spatial distribution of the $NH_3$ concentration in the atmosphere. To obtain observational data for the model validation, observations based on biweekly sampling have been conducted using passive samplers since April 2015 at multiple monitoring sites in the Tokyo metropolitan area. AQM, built based on WRF/CMAQ, was applied to predict the $NH_3$ concentration observed from April 2015 to March 2016. The simulation domain includes the Kanto region, which is the most densely populated area in Japan. Because the area also contains large amount of livestock, especially in its northern part, the density of the $NH_3$ emissions derived from human activities and agriculture there are estimated to be the highest in Japan. In the model validation, the model overestimated the observed $NH_3$ concentration in the summer season and underestimated it in the winter season. In particular, the overestimation in the summer was remarkable at a rural site (Komae) in Tokyo. It was found that the overestimation at Komae was caused by the transportation of $NH_3$ emitted in the northern part of the Kanto region during the night. It is suggested that the emission input used in this study overestimated the $NH_3$ emission from human sources around the Tokyo suburbs and agricultural sources in the northern part of the Kanto region in the summer season. In addition, the current emission inventories might overestimate the difference of the agricultural $NH_3$ emissions among seasons. Because the overestimation of $NH_3$ in the summer causes an overestimation of $NO_3{^-}$ in $PM_{2.5}$ in the AQM simulation, further investigation is necessary for the seasonal variation in the $NH_3$ emissions.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.25 no.7
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• pp.1017-1028
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• 2016

Wind information is one of the major inputs for the prediction of urban air flow using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models. Therefore, the numerical characteristics of the wind data formed at their mother domains should be clarified to predict the urban air flow more precisely. In this study, the formation characteristics of the wind data in the Seoul region were used as the inlet wind information for a CFD based simulation and were analyzed using numerical weather prediction models for weather research and forecasting (WRF). Because air flow over the central part of the Korean peninsula is often controlled not only by synoptic scale westerly winds but also by the westerly sea breeze induced from the Yellow Sea, the westerly wind often dominates the entire Seoul region. Although simulations of wind speed and air temperature gave results that were slightly high and low, respectively, their temporal variation patterns agreed well with the observations. In the analysis of the vertical cross section, the variation of wind speed along the western boundary of Seoul is simpler in a large domain with the highest horizontal resolution as compared to a small domain with the same resolution. A strong convergence of the sea breeze due to precise topography leads to the simplification of the wind pattern. The same tendency was shown in the average vertical profiles of the wind speed. The difference in the simulated wind pattern of two different domains is greater during the night than in the daytime because of atmospheric stability and topographically induced mesoscale forcing.

• Journal of Korean Society for Geospatial Information Science
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.3-8
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• 2017

In this study future wind resource maps have been produced under climate change scenario using ensemble regional climate model weather research and forecasting(WRF) for the period from 2045 to 2054(mid 21st century). Then various spatiotemporal analysis has been conducted in terms of monthly and diurnal. As a result, monthly variation(monsoon circulation) was larger than diurnal variation(land-sea circulation) throughout the South Korea. Strong wind area with high wind power energy was varied on months and regions. During whole years, strong wind with high wind resource was pronounced at cold(warm) months in particular Gangwon mountainous and coastal areas(southwestern coastal area) driven by strong northwesterly(southwesterly). Projected strong and weak wind were presented in January and September, respectively. Diurnal variation were large over inland and mountainous area while coastal area were small. This new monthly and diurnal variation would be useful to high resource area analysis and long-term operation of wind power according to wind variability in future.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.265-282
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• 2022

This study analyzes the impact of long-range transport of biomass burning emissions from northeastern China on the concentration of particulate matter of diameter less than 10 ㎛ (PM₁₀) in Korea using the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem). Korea was impacted by anthropogenic emissions from eastern China, dust storms from northern China and Mongolia, and biomass burning emissions from northeast China between April 4-and 7, 2020. The contributions of long-range PM₁₀ transport were calculated by separating biomass burning emissions from mixed air pollutants with anthropogenic emissions and dust storms using the zeroing-out method. Further, the radiation energy budget over land and sea around the Korean Peninsula was analyzed according to the distribution of biomass burning emissions. Based on the WRF-Chem simulation during April 5-6, 2020, the contribution of long-range transport of biomass burning emissions was calculated as 60% of the daily PM₁₀ average in Korea. The net heat flux around the Korean Peninsula was in a negative phase due to the influence of the large-scale biomass burning emissions. However, the contribution of biomass burning emissions was analyzed to be <45% during April 7-8, 2020, when the anthropogenic emissions from eastern China were added to biomass burning emissions, and PM₁₀ concentration increased compared with the concentration recorded during April 5-6, 2020 in Korea. Furthermore, the net heat flux around the Korean Peninsula increased to a positive phase with the decreasing influence of biomass burning emissions.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.503-510
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• 2014

To estimate the benefit of high-resolution meteorological data for building energy estimation, a building energy analysis has been conducted over Busan metropolitan areas. The heating and cooling load has been calculated at seven observational sites by using temperature, wind and relative humidity data provided by WRF model combined with the inner building data produced by American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). The building energy shows differences 2-3% in winter and 10-30% in summer depending on locations. This result implicates that high spatiotemporal resolution of meteorological model data is significantly important for building energy analysis.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.603-613
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• 2016

Fog may have a significant impact on road conditions. In an attempt to improve fog predictability in Jeju, we conducted machine learning with various data mining techniques such as tree models, conditional inference tree, random forest, multinomial logistic regression, neural network and support vector machine. To validate machine learning models, the results from the simulation was compared with the fog data observed over Jeju(184 ASOS site) and Gosan(185 ASOS site). Predictive rates proposed by six data mining methods are all above 92% at two regions. Additionally, we validated the performance of machine learning models with WRF (weather research and forecasting) model meteorological outputs. We found that it is still not good enough for operational fog forecast. According to the model assesment by metrics from confusion matrix, it can be seen that the fog prediction using neural network is the most effective method.

• Atmosphere
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.141-158
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• 2016

The objective of this study is to examine the impact of urban canopy and the horizontal resolution on simulated meteorological variables such as 10-m wind speed, 2-m temperature and precipitation using WRF model for a local, convective rainfall case. We performed four sensitivity tests by varying the use of urban canopy model (UCM) and the horizontal resolution, then compared the model results with observations of AWS network. The focus of our study is over the Seoul metropolitan area for a convective rainfall that occurred on 16 August 16 2015. The analysis shows that mean diurnal variation of temperature is better simulated by the model runs with UCM before the convective rainfall. However, after rainfall, model shows significant difference in air temperature among sensitivity tests depending on the simulated rainfall amount. The rainfall amount is significantly underestimated in 0.5 km resolution model run compared to 1.5 km resolution, particularly over the urban areas. This is due to earlier occurrence of light rainfall in 0.5 km resolution model. Earlier light rainfall in the afternoon eliminates convective instability significantly, which prevents occurrence of rainfall later in the evening. The use of UCM results in a higher maximum rainfall in the domain, which is due to higher temperature in model runs with urban canopy. Earlier occurrence of rainfall in 0.5 km resolution model is related to rapid growth of PBL. Enhanced mixing and higher temperature result in rapid growth of PBL, which provides more favorable conditions for convection in the 0.5 km resolution run with urban canopy. All sensitivity tests show dry bias, which also contributes to the occurrence of light precipitation throughout the simulation period.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.28-43
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• 2023

Background: High-fidelity meteorological data is a prerequisite for the realistic simulation of atmospheric dispersion of radioactive materials near nuclear power plants (NPPs). However, many meteorological models frequently overestimate near-surface wind speeds, failing to represent local meteorological conditions near NPPs. This study presents a new high-resolution (approximately 1 km) meteorological downscaling method for modeling short-range (< 100 km) atmospheric dispersion of accidental NPP plumes. Materials and Methods: Six considerations from literature reviews have been suggested for a new dynamic downscaling method. The dynamic downscaling method is developed based on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model version 3.6.1, applying high-resolution land-use and topography data. In addition, a new subgrid-scale topographic drag parameterization has been implemented for a realistic representation of the atmospheric surface-layer momentum transfer. Finally, a year-long simulation for the Kori and Wolsong NPPs, located in southeastern coastal areas, has been made for 2016 and evaluated against operational surface meteorological measurements and the NPPs' on-site weather stations. Results and Discussion: The new dynamic downscaling method can represent multiscale atmospheric motions from the synoptic to the boundary-layer scales and produce three-dimensional local meteorological fields near the NPPs with a 1.2 km grid resolution. Comparing the year-long simulation against the measurements showed a salient improvement in simulating near-surface wind fields by reducing the root mean square error of approximately 1 m/s. Furthermore, the improved wind field simulation led to a better agreement in the Eulerian estimate of the local atmospheric dispersion. The new subgrid-scale topographic drag parameterization was essential for improved performance, suggesting the importance of the subgrid-scale momentum interactions in the atmospheric surface layer. Conclusion: A new dynamic downscaling method has been developed to produce high-resolution local meteorological fields around the Kori and Wolsong NPPs, which can be used in short-range atmospheric dispersion modeling near the NPPs.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.464-477
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• 2009

In this study, we examined the patterns of local circulation over the Daechung lake area through the numerical experiment designed to investigate the impact of lake on the local circulation. The results of numerical experiment showed that the surface temperature predicted by WRF model was lower than the observation, while the wind speed was stronger than the observation. The local circulation over the lake area was characterized by a lake breeze induced by a horizontal thermal contrast between the lake surface and the Surrounding land. At Daecheong Lake, a lake breeze formed at 09 LST and dissipated at 18 LST, with maximum intensity at 15 LST. The vertical extent of the simulated circulation was about 1,200 m. The specific humidity increased as the humid air above the lake moved landward due to the daytime circulation of the lake breeze. The numerical experiments of sensitivity to existence of the lake showed that the simulated surface temperature decreased in the experiment with the lake. Wind speed was more intense around the lake area when the actual land use was substituted by grassland land use. The results of numerical experiments suggest that the lake-induced lake breeze circulation has an effect on the meteorology of planetary boundary layer around the lake.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.456-471
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• 2015

Emission source term is one of the strong controlling factors for the air quality simulation capability, particularly over the urban area. Ulsan is an industrial area and frequently required to simulate for environmental assessment. In this study, two CAPSS (Clean Air Policy Support System) emission data; CAPSS-2003 and CAPSS-2010 in Ulsan, were employed as an input data for WRF-CMAQ air quality model for emission assessment. The simulated results were compared with observations for the local emission dominant synoptic conditions which had negative vorticities and lower geostrophic wind speed at 850hPa weather maps. The measurements of CO, $NO_2$, $SO_2$ and $PM_{10}$ concentrations were compared with simulations and the 'scaling factors' of emissions for CO, $NO_2$, $SO_2$, and $PM_{10}$ were suggested in in aggregative and quantitative manner. The results showed that CAPSS-2003 showed no critical discrepancies of CO and $NO_2$ observations with simulations, while $SO_2$ was overestimated by a factor of more than 12, while $PM_{10}$ was underestimated by a factor of more than 20 times. However, CAPSS-2010 case showed that $SO_2$ and $PM_{10}$ emission were much more improved than CAPSS-2003. However, $SO_2$ was still overestimated by a factor of more than 2, and $PM_{10}$ underestimated by a factor of 5, while there was no significant improvement for CO and $NO_2$ emission. The estimated factors identified in this study can be used as'scaling factors'for optimizing the emissions of air pollutants, particularly $SO_2$ and $PM_{10}$ for the realistic air quality simulation in Ulsan.