• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.234-234
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• 2015

The global patterns of annual and extreme precipitation are projected to be altered by climate change. There are various weather systems which bring precipitation (e.g. tropical cyclone, extratropical cyclone, etc.). It is possible in some regions that multiple weather systems affect the changes of precipitation. However, previous studies have assessed only the changes of precipitation associated with individual weather systems. The relative contributions of the weather systems to the changes of precipitation have not been quantified yet. Also, the changes of the relative importance of weather systems have not been assessed. This study present the quantitative estimates of 1) the relative contributions of weather systems (tropical cyclone (TC), extratropical cyclone (ExC), and "others") to the future changes of annual and extreme precipitation and 2) the changes of the proportions of precipitation associated with each weather system in annual and extreme precipitation based on CMIP5 generation GCM outputs. Weather systems are objectively detected from twelve GCM outputs and six models are selected for further analysis considering the reproducibility of weather systems. In general, the weather system which is dominant in terms of producing precipitation in the present climate contributes the most to the changes of annual and extreme precipitation in each region. However, there are exceptions for the tendency. In East Asia, "others", which ranks the second in the proportion of annual precipitation in present climate, has the largest contribution to the increase of annual precipitation. It was found that the increase of the "others" annual precipitation in East Asia is mainly explained by the changes of that in summer season (JJA), most of which can be regarded as the summer monsoon precipitation. In Southeast Asia, "others" precipitation, the second dominant system in the present climate, has the largest contribution to the changes of very heavy precipitation (>99.9 percentile daily precipitation of historical period). Notable changes of the proportions of precipitation associated with each weather system are found mainly in subtropics, which can be regarded as the "hotspot" of the precipitation regime shift.

• Atmosphere
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.433-444
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• 2014

Although the Radar-AWS Rainrate (RAR) calculation system operated by Korea Meteorological Administration estimated precipitation using 2-dimensional composite components of single polarization radars, this system has several limitations in estimating the precipitation accurately. To to overcome limitations of the RAR system, the Korea Meteorological Administration developed and operated the RMQ (Radar-based Multi-sensor Quantitative Precipitation Estimation) system, the improved version of NMQ (National Mosaic and Multi-sensor Quantitative Precipitation Estimation) system of NSSL (National Severe Storms Laboratory) for the Korean Peninsula. This study introduced the RMQ system domestically for the first time and verified the precipitation estimation performance of the RMQ system. The RMQ system consists of 4 main parts as the process of handling the single radar data, merging 3D reflectivity, QPE, and displaying result images. The first process (handling of the single radar data) has the pre-process of a radar data (transformation of data format and quality control), the production of a vertical profile of reflectivity and the correction of bright-band, and the conduction of hydrid scan reflectivity. The next process (merger of 3D reflectivity) produces the 3D composite reflectivity field after correcting the quality controlled single radar reflectivity. The QPE process classifies the precipitation types using multi-sensor information and estimates quantitative precipitation using several Z-R relationships which are proper for precipitation types. This process also corrects the precipitation using the AWS position with local gauge correction technique. The last process displays the final results transformed into images in the web-site. This study also estimated the accuracy of the RMQ system with five events in 2012 summer season and compared the results of the RAR (Radar-AWS Rainrate) and RMQ systems. The RMQ system ($2.36mm\;hr^{-1}$ in RMSE on average) is superior to the RAR system ($8.33mm\;hr^{-1}$ in RMSE) and improved by 73.25% in RMSE and 25.56% in correlation coefficient on average. The precipitation composite field images produced by the RMQ system are almost identical to the AWS (Automatic Weather Statioin) images. Therefore, the RMQ system has contributed to improve the accuracy of precipitation estimation using weather radars and operation of the RMQ system in the work field in future enables to cope with the extreme weather conditions actively.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.725-740
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• 2008

In this study a multi-site daily precipitation generator which generates the precipitation with similar spatial correlation, and at the same time, with conserving statistical properties of the observed data is developed. The proposed generator is intended to be a tool for down-scaling the data obtained from GCMs or RCMs into local scales. The occurrences of precipitation are simultaneously modeled in multi-sites by 2-parameter first-order Markov chain using random variables of spatially correlated while temporally independent, and then, the amount of precipitation is simulated by 3-parameter mixed exponential probability density function that resolves the issue of maintaining intermittence of precipitation field. This approach is applied to the Nakdong river basin and the observed data are daily precipitation data of 19 locations. The results show that spatial correlations of precipitation series are relatively well simulated and statistical properties of observed precipitation series are simulated properly.

• Atmosphere
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.67-83
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• 2015

Predicting the location and intensity of precipitation still remains a main issue in numerical weather prediction (NWP). Resolution is a very important component of precipitation forecasts in NWP. Compared with a lower resolution model, a higher resolution model can predict small scale (i.e., storm scale) precipitation and depict convection structures more precisely. In addition, an ensemble technique can be used to improve the precipitation forecast because it can estimate uncertainties associated with forecasts. Therefore, NWP using both a higher resolution model and ensemble technique is expected to represent inherent uncertainties of convective scale motion better and lead to improved forecasts. In this study, the limited area ensemble prediction system for the convective-scale (i.e., high resolution) operational Unified Model (UM) in Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) was developed and evaluated for the ensemble forecasts during August 2012. The model domain covers the limited area over the Korean Peninsula. The high resolution limited area ensemble prediction system developed showed good skill in predicting precipitation, wind, and temperature at the surface as well as meteorological variables at 500 and 850 hPa. To investigate which combination of horizontal resolution and ensemble member is most skillful, the system was run with three different horizontal resolutions (1.5, 2, and 3 km) and ensemble members (8, 12, and 16), and the forecasts from the experiments were evaluated. To assess the quantitative precipitation forecast (QPF) skill of the system, the precipitation forecasts for two heavy rainfall cases during the study period were analyzed using the Fractions Skill Score (FSS) and Probability Matching (PM) method. The PM method was effective in representing the intensity of precipitation and the FSS was effective in verifying the precipitation forecast for the high resolution limited area ensemble prediction system in KMA.

• Atmosphere
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.449-454
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• 2012

This study presents the long-term variability of spring precipitation over the Korean peninsula. It is found that the significant interdecadal change in the spring precipitation has occurred around year 1991. Over the Korean peninsula the precipitation for the post-1991 period increased by about 30 mm per year in CMAP and station-measured data compared to the precipitation prior to year 1991. Due to an increased baroclinicity during the later period, the low-level negative pressure anomaly has developed with its center over northern Japan. Korea is situated at the western end of the negative pressure anomaly, receiving moisture from westerly winds and producing more precipitation. Also, we estimate the change in the near future (years 2020~2040) spring precipitation using six best performing Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 3 (CMIP3) models. These best model ensemble mean shows that spring precipitation is anticipated to increase by about 4% due to the strengthened westerlies accompanied by the northwestern enhancement of the North Pacific subtropical high.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.334-334
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• 2022

Improvement of old-fashioned rain gauge systems for automatic, timely, continuous, and accurate precipitation observation is highly essential for weather/climate prediction and natural hazards early warning, since the occurrence frequency and intensity of heavy and extreme precipitation events (especially floods) are recently getting more increase and severe worldwide due to climate change. Although rain gauge accuracy of 0.1 mm is recommended by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the traditional rain gauges in both weighting and tipping bucket types are often unable to meet that demand due to several existing technical limitations together with higher production and maintenance costs. Therefore, we aim to introduce a newly developed and cost-effective hybrid rain gauge system at 0.1 mm accuracy that combines advantages of weighting and tipping bucket types for continuous, automatic, and accurate precipitation observation, where the errors from long-term load cells and external environmental sources (e.g., winds) can be removed via an automatic drainage system and artificial intelligence-based data quality control procedure. Our rain gauge system consists of an instrument unit for measuring precipitation, a communication unit for transmitting and receiving measured precipitation signals, and a database unit for storing, processing, and analyzing precipitation data. This newly developed rain gauge was designed according to the weather instrument criteria, where precipitation amounts filled into the tipping bucket are measured considering the receiver's diameter, the maximum measurement of precipitation, drainage time, and the conductivity marking. Moreover, it is also designed to transmit the measured precipitation data stored in the PCB through RS232, RS485, and TCP/IP, together with connecting to the data logger to enable data collection and analysis based on user needs. Preliminary results from a comparison with an existing 1.0-mm tipping bucket rain gauge indicated that our developed rain gauge has an excellent performance in continuous precipitation observation with higher measurement accuracy, more correct precipitation days observed (120 days), and a lower error of roughly 27 mm occurred during the measurement period.

• Atmosphere
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.421-437
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• 2020

The effects of the terminal fall velocity-diameter relationship for raindrops, which is prescribed based on the measurement, on the simulated surface precipitation over Korea during summer season were investigated in our study. Two rainfall cases, 1-month summer precipitation and mesoscale rainfall, have been simulated using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The selected cloud microphysics parameterizations are WRF Single-Moment 5-class (WSM5) and WRF Single-Moment 6-class (WSM6) in the WRF model. The measured terminal fall-diameter relationship for raindrops by Gunn and Kinzer (1949) was applied in both WSM5 and WSM6. The sensitivity experiments with WSM5 and WSM6, applying the measured fall-diameter relationship, presents the different responses in simulated precipitation amount for the 1-month summer precipitation case. Precipitation increases with WSM5, thus enhancing the precipitation statistical skills. However, precipitation decreases with WSM6 leading to the deterioration of precipitation statistical skills. For the mesoscale rainfall case, precipitation increases with both WSM5 and WSM6, which further enhances the positive bias in precipitation amount.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2020.06a
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• pp.379-379
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• 2020

The influence of drought has increased due to global warming. In addition, forest fires have occurred more frequently due to droughts and resulted in property losses and casualty. In this study, the effects of drought on Goseong-Sokcho Forest Fire in 2019 were analyzed using high-resolution synthetic precipitation data. In order to determine the severity of drought, the average, 20%tile and 80%ile values were calculated using the synthetic precipitation data of the past 30 years and compared with the current climatology. We have investigated the multi-year accumulated precipitation data to determine the persistence of drought. In Goseong-Sokcho forest fire case, the two-year cumulative synthetic precipitation data shows a similar value to the climate, but the three-year cumulative synthetic precipitation data was close to the 20%ile lines of the climate value. It may expose that the shortage of precipitation in 2017 had persisted until 2019, despite abundant precipitation during the summer in 2018. Therefore, Goseong-Sokcho forest fire might be spread more rapidly by drought which has been persisted since 2017.

• Atmosphere
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.475-483
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• 2008

The hourly precipitation data from 1973 to 2007 observed at 60 weather stations over Korea are used to characterize the diurnal and semidiurnal cycles of total precipitation amount, intensity and frequency and examine their spatial patterns and interannual variations. The results show that the diurnal cycle peaks in the morning (03-09LST) and the semidiurnal cycle peaks in the late afternoon (16-20LST). It is found that the spatial variations of the peak phase of diurnal or semidiurnal cycle relative to their corresponding seasonal mean cycle are considerably small (large) for total precipitation amount and intensity (frequency, respectively) in both winter and summer seasons. Also, the diurnal phase variations for individual years relative to the seasonal mean precipitation show the significant interannual variability with dominant periods of 2-5 years for all three elements of precipitation and the slightly decreasing trend in total precipitation amount and intensity. To compare the relative contributions of frequency and intensity to the diurnal and semidiurnal cycles (and their sum) of total precipitation amount, the percentage variance of each cycle of precipitation amount explained by frequency is estimated. The fractional variance accounted for by precipitation intensity is greater than that of frequency for these three cycles. All above analyses suggest that intensity plays a more important role than frequency in the diurnal variations of total precipitation amount.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.65-75
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• 2023

Recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) is widely used as a construction material in road construction, concrete structures, embankments, etc. However, it has been reported that calcite (CaCO₃) precipitation from RCA can be a cause of clogging when used in drainage applications. An accelerated calcite precipitation (ACP) procedure has been devised to evaluate the long-term geochemical performance of RCA in subsurface drainage systems. While the ACP procedure was useful for the French Drain application, there remained opportunities for improvement. In this study, key factors that control the formation of calcite precipitation were quantitatively evaluated, and the results were used to improve the current prototype ACP method. A laboratory parametric study was carried out by investigating the effects of reaction temperature and time on the formation of calcite precipitation of RCA, with determining an optimum reaction temperature and time which maximizes calcite precipitation. The improved ACP procedure was then applied to RCA samples that were graded for Type I Underdrain application, to compare the calcite precipitation. Two key findings are (1) that calcite precipitation can be maximized with the optimum heating temperature (75℃) and time (17 hours), and (2) the potential for calcite precipitation from RCA is not as significant as for limestone. With the improved ACP procedure, the total amount of calcite precipitation from RCAs within the life cycle of a drain system can be determined when RCAs from different sources are used as pipe backfill materials in a drain system.