• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.98-113
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• 2015

In this study, spatial and temporal patterns and changes in seasonal multi-day cumulative extreme precipitation events defined by maximum 1~5 days cumulative extreme precipitation observed at 61 weather stations in the Republic of Korea for the recent 40 years(1973~2012) are examined. It is demonstrated that the magnitude of multi-day cumulative extreme precipitation events is greatest in summer, while their sensitivity relative to the variations of seasonal total precipitation is greatest in fall. According to analyses of linear trends in the time series data, the most noticeable increases in the magnitude of multi-day cumulative extreme precipitation events are observable in summer with coherences amongst 1~5 days cumulative extreme precipitation events. In particular, the regions with significant increases include Gyeonggi province, western Gangwon province and Chungcheong province, and as the period for the accumulation of extreme precipitation increases from 1 day to 5 days, the regions with significantly-increasing trends are extended to the Sobaek mountain ridge. It is notable that at several scattered stations, the increases of 1~2 days cumulative extreme precipitation events are observed even in winter. It is also observed that most distinct increasing tendency of the ratio of these multi-day cumulative extreme precipitation to seasonal total precipitation appears in winter. These results indicate that proactive actions are needed for spatial and temporal changes in not only summer but also other seasonal multi-day cumulative extreme precipitation events in Korea.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.2B
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• pp.129-146
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• 2011

Characterization the regional impact of the variability of summer extreme precipitation and the rain days over several thresholds (i.e. 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80 mm/day) in South Korea was performed using daily precipitation data of 59 weather stations operated by Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA). To consider the local features of weather stations, we characterized the variability according to the difference of elevations, latitudes, longitudes, river basins, inland or shore area, and the ratio of urbanization. The results showed that the summer extreme precipitation is sensible to the geographical effect which is similar to that of the annual precipitation. Rain days over thresholds have increased during 1973-2009 while the annual rain days have decreased. This indicate that the concentration of precipitation in summer season will be intensified in the future. Increase of summer precipitation amount and number of extreme rain days is higher in inland area, urbanized area, and Han-River basin than that of shore area, unurbanized area, and the other river basins respectively.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.394-410
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• 2015

This study aims to classify climate zones for extreme climate indices over the Republic of Korea. First, frequencies and magitudes of extreme high temperature, spatial distributions for extreme low temperature, and extreme precipitation are analysed. Frequencies of summer days in inland region show more than coastal region. In frequencies of frost days, the characteristics of altitude and longitude are appeared. Heavy precipitation days show many frequencies in the southern coastal region and Jeju island, but little in Gyeongsangbuk-do region. The classification of climate zone for extreme climate indices by principal component analysis and cluster analysis is conducted for the first half, second half of study period, and climatology period for 1981-2010. Summer days are classified according to latitude. In case of frost days, the eastern and the southern coastal region and Jeju island are classified as same region. Heavy precipitation days are classified according to longitude in south region of Gyeonggi-do and Gangwon-do. This study will help to prepare adaptation and mitigation system for climate change in wide range of fields.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.39 no.5 s.104
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• pp.711-721
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• 2004

The aim of this study is to clarify whether frequency and/or severity of extreme climate events have changed significantly in Korea during recent years. Using the best available daily data, spatial and temporal aspects of ten climate change indicators are investigated on an annual and seasonal basis for the periods of 1954-1999. A systematic increase in the $90^{th}$ percentile of daily minimum temperatures at most of the analyzed areas has been observed. This increase is accompanied by a similar reduction in the number of frost days and a significant lengthening of the thermal growing season. Although the intra-annual extreme temperature range is based on only two observations, it provides a very robust and significant measure of declining extreme temperature variability. The five precipitation-related indicators show no distinct changing patterns for spatial and temporal distribution except for the regional series of maximum consecutive dry days. Interestingly, the regional series of consecutive dry days have increased significantly while the daily rainfall intensity index and the fraction of annual total precipitation due to events exceeding the $95^{th}$ percentile for 1901-1990 normals have insignificantly increased.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.505-520
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• 2011

This study is aimed to examine the change on extreme precipitation events in South Korea. The country is divided into six basins, and seven extreme precipitation indices-related to heavy rainfall are analyzed at sixty weather stations. The increasing trend in amount of heavy rainfall is more stable than that in days of heavy rainfall. The increasing trend is the most stable when days of rainfall are more than 50 mm, or rainfall is over the 95th percentile. The precipitation indices-related to heavy rainfall was mostly increasing during analysis period. Especially, basins of the Han river, the upper Nakdong river, and the Eastern coast show significantly increasing trends compared to the other basins. However, the increasing trends of the Geum river and the Seomjin river are not statistically significant. Heavy rainfall events had stably increased in the Han and the Nakdong rivers since the mid-1970s. However, the number of stably increasing regions has decreased since the mid-2000s. It means that the frequency and intensity of the recent heavy rainfall become more irregular.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2023.05a
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• pp.163-163
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• 2023

Flooding has become an increasing event which is one of the major natural disasters responsible for direct economic damage in South Korea. Driven by climate change, precipitation extremes play significant role on the flood damage and its further increase is expected to exacerbate the socioeconomic impact in the country. However, the empirical evidence associating changes in precipitation extremes to the historical flood damage is limited. Thus, there is a need to assess the causal relationship between changes in precipitation extremes and flood damage, especially in agricultural region like Chungcheong region in South Korea. The spatial and temporal changes of precipitation extremes from 10 synoptic stations based on daily precipitation data were analyzed using the ClimPACT2 tool and Mann-Kendall test. The four precipitation extreme indices consisting of consecutive wet days (CWD), number of very heavy precipitation wet days (R30 mm), maximum 1-day precipitation amount (Rx1day), and simple daily precipitation intensity (SDII), which represent changes in intensity, frequency, and duration, respectively, and the time series data on flooded area and flood damage from 1985 to 2020 were used to investigate the causal relationship in the ARDL-ECM framework and pairwise Granger causality analysis. The trend results showed that majority of the precipitation indices indicated positive trends, however, CWD showed no significant changes. ARDL-ECM framework showed that there was a long-run relationship among the variables. Further analysis on the empirical results showed that flooded area and Rx1day have significant positive impacts on the flood damage in both short and long-runs while R30 mm only indicated significant positive impact in the short-run, both in the current period, which implies that an increase in flooded area, Rx1day, and R30 mm will cause an increase in the flood damage. The pairwise Granger analysis showed unidirectional causality from the flooded area, R30 mm, Rx1day, and SDII to flood damage. Thus, these precipitation indices could be useful as indicators of pluvial flood damage in Chungcheong region of South Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.681-700
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• 2008

In this study, the spatial and temporal patterns of changes in means and extreme events of temperature and precipitation across the Republic of Korea over the last 35 years (1973-2007) are examined. Over the study period, meteorological winter (December-February) mean minimum (maximum) temperature has increased by $+0.54^{\circ}C$/decade ($+0.6^{\circ}C$/decade), while there have been no significant changes in meteorological summer (June-August) mean temperatures. According to analyses of upper or lower $10^{th}$ percentile-based extreme temperature indices, the annual frequency of cool nights (days) has decreased by -9.2 days/decade (-3.3 days/decade), while the annual frequency of warm nights (days) has increased by +4.9 days/decade (+6.8 days/decade). In contrast, the increase rates of summer warm nights (+8.0 days/$^{\circ}C$) and days (+6.6 days/$^{\circ}C$) relative to changes in summer means minimum and maximum temperatures means are greater than the decreasing rates of winter nights (-5.2 days/$^{\circ}C$) and days (-4.3 days/$^{\circ}C$) relative to changes in winter temperatures. These results demonstrate that seasonal and diurnal asymmetric changes in extreme temperature events have occurred. Moreover, annual total precipitation has increased by 85.5 mm/decade particularly in July and August, which led to the shift of a bimodal behavior of summer precipitation into a multi-modal structure. These changes have resulted from the intensification of heavy rainfall events above 40mm in recent decades, and spatially the statistically-significant increases in these heavy rainfall events are observed around the Taebaek mountain region.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.424-433
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• 2021

Recent climate change has caused abnormal weather phenomena all over the world and a lot of damage in many fields of society. Particularly, a lot of recent damages were due to extreme precipitation, such as torrential downpour or drought. The objective of this study was to analyze the temporal and spatial changes in the precipitation pattern in South Korea. To achieve this objective, this study selected some of the precipitation indices suggested in previous studies to compare the temporal characteristics of precipitation induced by climate change. This study selected ten ASOS observatories of the Korea Meteorological Administration to understand the change over time for each location with considering regional distribution. This study also collected daily cumulative precipitation from 1951 to 2020 for each point. Additionally, this study generated high-resolution national daily precipitation distribution maps using an orographic precipitation model from 1981 to 2020 and analyzed them. Temporal analysis showed that although annual cumulative precipitation revealed an increasing trend from the past to the present. The number of precipitation days showed a decreasing trend at most observation points, but the number of torrential downpour days revealed an increasing trend. Spatially, the number of precipitation days and the number of torrential downpour days decreased in many areas over time, and this pattern was prominent in the central region. The precipitation pattern of South Korea can be summarized as the fewer precipitation days and larger daily precipitation over time.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2023.05a
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• pp.158-158
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• 2023

Characterizing the performance of precipitation (hereafter PRE) products in estimating the uncertainties in daily PRE in the era of global warming is of great value to the ecosystem's sustainability and human survival. This study intercompares the performance of different PRE products (gauge-based, satellite and reanalysis) sourced from the Frequent Rainfall Observations on GridS (FROGS) database over diverse climate zones in Africa and identifies regions where they depict minimal uncertainties in order to build optimal maps as a guide for different climate users. This is achieved by utilizing various techniques, including the triple collection (TC) approach, to assess the capabilities and limitations of different PRE products over nine climatic zones over the continent. For daily scale analysis, the uncertainties in light PRE (0.1 5mm/day) are prevalent over most regions in Africa during the study duration (2001-2016). Estimating the occurrence of extreme PRE events based on daily PRE 90th percentile suggests that extreme PRE is mainly detected over central Africa (CAF) region and some coastal regions of west Africa (WAF) where the majority of uncorrected satellite products show good agreement. The detection of PRE days and non-PRE days based on categorical statistics suggests that a perfect POD/FAR score is unattainable irrespective of the product type. Daily PRE uncertainties determined based on quantitative metrics show that consistent, satisfactory performance is demonstrated by the IMERG products (uncorrected), ARCv2, CHIRPSv2, 3B42v7.0 and PERSIANN_CDRv1r1 (corrected), and GPCC, CPC_v1.0, and REGEN_ALL (gauge) during the study period. The optimal maps that show the classification of products in regions where they depict reliable performance can be recommended for various usage for different stakeholders.

• Atmosphere
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.477-492
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• 2023

Based on the new climate normals (1991~2020), annual mean, maximum and minimum temperature is 12.5℃, 18.2℃, and 7.7℃, respectively while annual precipitation is 1,331.7 mm, the annual mean wind speed is 2.0 m s^-1, and the relative humidity is 67.8% in the Republic of Korea. Compared to 1981~2010 normal, annual mean temperature increased by 0.2℃, maximum and minimum temperatures increased by 0.3℃, while the amount of precipitation (0.7%) and relative humidity (1.1%) decreased. There was no distinct change in annual mean wind speed. The spatial range of the annual mean temperature in the new normals is large from 7.1 to 16.9℃. Annual precipitation showed a high regional variability, ranging from 787.3 to 2,030.0 mm. The annual mean relative humidity decreased at most weather stations due to the rise in temperature, and the annual mean wind speed did not show any distinct difference between the new and old normals. With the addition of a warmer decade (2011~2020), temperatures all increased consistently and in particular, the increase in the maximum temperature, which had not significantly changed in previous decades, was evident. The increasing trend of annual and summer precipitation by the 2010s has disappeared in the new normals. Among extreme climate indices, MxT30 (Daily maximum temperature ≥ 33℃ days), MnT25 (Daily minimum temperature ≥ 25℃ days), and PH30 (1 hour maximum precipitation ≥ 30 mm days) increased while MnT-10 (Daily minimum temperature < -10℃ days) and W13.9 (Daily maximum wind speed ≥ 13.9 m/s days) decreased at a statistically significant level. It is thought that a detailed study on the different trends of climate elements and extreme climate indices by region should be conducted in the future.