• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.129-138
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• 2017

The coastal wave environment is a very important factor that directly affects the change of coastal topography, the habitat of marine life, and the design of offshore structures. In recent years, changes in the wave environment due to climate change are expected, and a trend analysis of the wave environment using available data sets is required. In this paper, significant wave heights which are measured at six ocean buoys (Deokjeokdo, Oeyeondo, Chibaldo, Marado, Pohang, Ullengdo) have been used to analyze long-term trend of normal waves. In advance, the outlier of measured data by Korea Meteorological Administration have been removed using Rosner test. And Pearson correlation analysis between the measured data and ECMWF reanalysis data has been conducted. As a results, correlation coefficient between two data were 0.849~0.938. Meanwhile, Mann-Kendall test has been used to analyze the long-term trend of normal waves. As a results, it was found that there were no trend at Deokjeokdo, Oeyeondo and Chibaldo. However, Marado, Pohang and Ullengdo showed an increasing tendency.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.16-24
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• 1998

In this study, Ocean General Circulation Model (OGCM) has been developed as a counterpart of Atmospheric General Circulation (AGCM) for the study of coupled ocean-atmosphere climate system. The oceanic responses to given atmospheric boundary conditions have been investigated using the OGCM. In an integration carried out over 100 simulated years with climatological monthly mean data (EXP 1), most parts of the model reached a quasi-equilibrium climate reproducing many of the observed large-scale oceanic features remarkably well. Some observed narrow currents, however, such as North Equatorial Counter Current, were inevitably distorted due to the model's relatively coarse resolution. The seasonal changes in sea ice cover over the southern oceans around Antarctica were also simulated. In an experiment (EXP 2) under boundary condition of 10-year monthly data (1982-1991) from NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis Project model properly reproduced major oceanic changes during the period, including El Ni$\tilde{n}$os of 1982-1983 and 1986-87. During the ENSO periods, the experiment showed eastward expansion of warm surface waters and a negative vertical velocity anomalies along' the equator in response to expansion of westerly current velocity anomalies as westerly wind anomalies propagated eastward. Simulated anomalous distribution and the time behavior in response to El Ni$\tilde{n}$o events is consistent with that of the observations. These experiments showed that the model has an ability to reproduce major mean and anomalous oceanic features and can be effectively used for the study of ocean-atmosphere coupling system.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.441-458
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• 2023

Tropical cyclones frequently occur in the Southwest Pacific Ocean and are considered one of the driving forces for coastal alterations. Therefore, this study investigates the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclonesfrom 2000 to 2021 and their influence on the surface winds and wave conditions around the atoll nation Tuvalu. Cyclone best-track and ERA5 single-level reanalysis data are utilized to analyze the condition of the surface winds, significant wave heights, mean wave direction, and mean wave period. Additionally, the scatterometer-derived wind information was employed to compare wind conditions with the ERA5 data. On average, nine cyclones per year originated here, and the frequency increased to 11 cyclones during the last three years while the intensity decreased by 25 m/s (maximum sustained wind speed). Besides, a total of 14 cyclones were observed around Tuvalu during the period from 2015 to 2021, which showed an increase of 3 cyclones compared to the preceding period of 2001 to 2007. During cyclones, the significant wave height reached the highest 4.8 m near Tuvalu, and the waves propagated in the east-southeast direction during most of the cyclone events (52%). In addition, prolonged swells with a mean wave period of 7 to 11 seconds were generated in the vicinity of Tuvalu, for which coastal alteration can occur. After this preliminary analysis, it was found that the waves generated by cyclones have a crucial impact in altering the coastal area of Tuvalu. In the future, remotely sensed high-resolution satellite data with this wave information will be used to find out the degree of alterations that happened in the coastal area of Tuvalu before and after the cyclone events.

• Atmosphere
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.115-129
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• 2019

Surface winds over the ocean influence not only the climate change through air-sea interactions but the coastal erosion through the changes in wave height and direction. Thus, demands on a reliable projection of future changes in surface winds have been increasing in various fields. For the future projections, climate models have been widely used and, as a priori, their simulations of surface wind are required to be evaluated. In this study, we evaluate the climatological mean surface winds over the Korean Waters simulated by five regional climate models participating in Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) for East Asia (EA), an international regional climate model inter-comparison project. Compared with the ERA-interim reanalysis data, the CORDEX-EA models, except for HadGEM3-RA, produce stronger wind both in summer and winter. The HadGEM3-RA underestimates the wind speed and inadequately simulate the spatial distribution especially in summer. This summer wind error appears to be coincident with mean sea-level pressure in the North Pacific. For wind direction, all of the CORDEX-EA models simulate the well-known seasonal reversal of surface wind similar to the ERA-interim. Our results suggest that especially in summer, large-scale atmospheric circulation, downscaled by regional models with spectral nudging, significantly affect the regional surface wind on its pattern and strength.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.351-362
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• 2020

Numerical simulations of the storm surge and waves induced by the Typhoon Maemi incident on the south sea of Korea in 2003 are performed using the JMA-MSM forecast weather field, NCEP-CFSR reanalysis weather field, ECMWF-ERA5 reanalysis weather field, and the pressure and wind fields obtained using the best track information provided by JTWC. The calculated surge heights are compared with the time history observed at harbours along the coasts of Korea. For the waves occurring coincidentally with the storm surges the calculated significant wave heights are compared with the measured data. Based on the comparison of surge and wave heights the assessment of the reliability of various weather fields is performed. As a result the JMA-MSM weather fields gives the highest reliability, and the weather field obtained using JTWC best track information gives also relatively good agreement. The ECMWF-ERA5 gives in general surge and wave heights weaker than the measured. The reliability of NCEP-CFSR turns out to be the worst for this special case of Typhoon Maemi. Based on the results of this study it is found that the reliable weather fields are essential for the accurate simulation of storm surges and waves.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.418-421
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• 2007

Using gridded wind-stress products constructed by satellite scatterometers (ERS-1, 2 and QSCAT) data and those by numerical weather prediction(NWP) model(NCEP-reanalysis), we estimate wind-driven transports of the North Pacific subtropical gyre, and compare them in the central portion of the gyre (around 300 N) with geostrophic transports calculated from historical hydrographic data (World Ocean Database 2005). Even if there are some discrepancies between the wind-driven transports by the QSCAT and NCEP products, they are both in good agreement with the geostrophic transports within reasonable errors, except for the regional difference in the eastern part of the zone. The difference in the eastern part is characterized by an anticyclonic deviation of the geostrophic transport resulting from an anti-cyclonic anomalous flow in the surface layer, suggesting that it is related to the Eastern Gyral produced by the thermohaline process associated with the formation of the Eastern Subtropical Mode Water. We also examine the consistency of the Sverdrup transports estimated from these products by comparing them with the transports of the western boundary current, namely the Kuroshio regions, in previous studies. The net southward transport, based on the sum of the Sverdrup transports by QSCAT and NCEP products and the thermohaline transport, agrees well with the net northward transport of the western boundary current, namely the Kuroshio transport. From these results, it is concluded that the Sverdrup balance can hold in the North Pacific subtropical gyre.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.263-274
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• 2020

In the Southeast Sea of Korea, a cold water mass is formed intensively in summer every year, causing frequent abnormal sea conditions. In order to analyze the spatial changes of sea surface temperature distribution in this area, ocean fields buoy data observed at Gori and Jeongja and reanalyzed sea surface temperature(SST) data from GHRSST Level 4 were used from June to September 2018. The buoy data were used to analyze the time-series water temperature changes at two stations, and the GHRSST data were used to calculate the daily SST variance and weighted mean center(WMC) across the study area. When the buoy's water temperature was lowered, the variance of SST in the study area trend to increase, but it did not appear consistently for the entire period. This is because GHRSST is a reanalysis data that does not reflect sensitive changes in water temperature along the coast. As such, there is a limit to grasping the local small-scale water temperature change in the coast or detecting the location and extent of the cold water zone only by the statistical variance representing the SST change in the entire sea area. Therefore, as a result of using WMC to quantitatively determine the spatial location of the cold water mass, when the cold water zone occurred, WMC was located in the northwest sea area from the mean center(MC) of the study area. This means that it is possible to quantitatively identify where and to what extent the distribution of cold surface water temperature appears through SST's WMC location information, and we could see the possibility of WMC's use in detecting the scale of cold water zones and the extent of regional spread in the future.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.305-311
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• 2016

The spatial size and variation of Arctic sea ice play an important role in Earth's climate system. These are affected by conditions in the polar atmosphere and Arctic sea temperatures. The Arctic sea ice concentration is calculated from brightness temperature data derived from the Defense Meteorological Satellite program (DMSP) F13 Special Sensor Microwave/Imagers (SSMI) and the DMSP F17 Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) sensors. Many previous studies point to significant reductions in sea ice and their causes. We investigated the variability of Arctic sea ice using the daily sea ice concentration data from passive microwave observations to identify the sea ice melting regions near the Arctic polar ice cap. We discovered the abnormal melting of the Arctic sea ice near the North Pole during the summer and the winter. This phenomenon is hard to explain only surface air temperature or solar heating as suggested by recent studies. We propose a hypothesis explaining this phenomenon. The heat from the deep sea in Arctic Ocean ridges and/or the hydrothermal vents might be contributing to the melting of Arctic sea ice. This hypothesis could be verified by the observation of warm water column structure below the melting or thinning arctic sea ice through the project such as Coriolis dataset for reanalysis (CORA).

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.259-270
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• 2016

Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) observations from the Aquarius satellite in the East Sea show large systematic biases mainly caused by the surrounding lands and Radio Frequency Interferences (RFI) along the descending orbits on which the satellite travels from the Asian continent to the East Sea. To develop a technique for correcting the systematic biases unique to the East Sea, the least square regression between in situ observations of salinity and the reanalyzed salinities by HYCOM is first performed. Then monthly mean reanalyzed salinities fitted to the in situ salinities are compared with monthly mean Aquarius salinities to calculate mean biases in $1^{\circ}{\times}1^{\circ}$ boxes. Mean biases in winter (December-March) are found to be considerably larger than those in other seasons possibly caused by the inadequate correction of surface roughness in the sea surrounded by the land, and thus the mean bias corrections are performed using two bias tables. Large negative biases are found in the area near the coast of Japan and in the areas with islands. In the northern East Sea, data sets using the ascending orbit only (SCIA) are chosen for correction because of large RFI errors on the descending orbit (SCID). Resulting mean biases between the reanalysis salinities fitted to in situ observations and the bias corrected Aquarius salinities are less than 0.2 psu in all areas. The corrected mean salinity distributions in March and September demonstrate marked improvements when compared with mean salinities from the World Ocean Atlas (WOA [2005-2012]). In September, salinity distributions based on the corrected Aquarius and on the WOA (2005-2012) show similar distributions of Changjiang Diluted Water (CDW) in the East Sea.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.29 no.7
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• pp.770-778
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• 2023

Sea surface wind is an important variable for elucidating the atmospheric-ocean interactions and predicting the dangerous weather conditions caused by oceans. Accurate sea surface wind data are required for making correct predictions; however, there are limited observational datasets for oceans. Therefore, this study aimed to obtain long-period high-resolution sea surface wind data. First, the ERA5 reanalysis wind field, which can be used for a long period at a high resolution, was regridded and synthesized using the asymmetric typhoon wind field calculated via the Generalized Asymmetric Holland Model of the numerical model named ADvanced CIRCulation model. The accuracy of the asymmetric typhoon synthesized wind field was evaluated using data obtained from Korea Meteorological Administration and Japan Meteorological Administration. As a result of the evaluation, it was found that the asymmetric typhoon synthetic wind field reproduce observations relatively well, compared with ERA5 reanalysis wind field and symmetric typhoon synthetic wind field calculated by the Holland model. The sea surface wind data produced in this study are expected to be useful for obtaining storm surge data and conducting frequency analysis of storm surges and sea surface winds in the future.