• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.20-25
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• 2012

New Zealand suffers from regular floods, these being the most common source of insurance claims for damage from natural hazard events in the country. This paper describes the origin and distribution of the largest floods in New Zealand, and describes the systems used to monitor and predict floods. In New Zealand, broad-scale heavy rainfall (and flooding), is the result of warm moist air flowing out from the tropics into the mid-latitudes. There is no monsoon in New Zealand. The terrain has a substantial influence on the distribution of rainfall, with the largest annual totals occurring near the South Island's Southern Alps, the highest mountains in the country. The orographic effect here is extreme, with 3km of elevation gained over a 20km distance from the coast. Across New Zealand, short duration high intensity rainfall from thunderstorms also causes flooding in urban areas and small catchments. Forecasts of severe weather are provided by the New Zealand MetService, a Government owned company. MetService uses global weather models and a number of limited-area weather models to provide warnings and data streams of predicted rainfall to local Councils. Flood monitoring, prediction and warning are carried out by 16 local Councils. All Councils collect their own rainfall and river flow data, and a variety of prediction methods are utilized. These range from experienced staff making intuitive decisions based on previous effects of heavy rain, to hydrological models linked to outputs from MetService weather prediction models. No operational hydrological models are linked to weather radar in New Zealand. Councils provide warnings to Civil Defence Emergency Management, and also directly to farmers and other occupiers of flood prone areas. Warnings are distributed by email, text message and automated voice systems. A nation-wide hydrological model is also operated by NIWA, a Government-owned research institute. It is linked to a single high resolution weather model which runs on a super computer. The NIWA model does not provide public forecasts. The rivers with the greatest flood flows are shown, and these are ranked in terms of peak specific discharge. It can be seen that of the largest floods occur on the West Coast of the South Island, and the greatest flows per unit area are also found in this location.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.56-65
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• 2019

This study empirically analyzes the effect of weather on pedestrian volume in an urban space. We used data from the 2009 Seoul Flow Population Survey and constructed a model with the pedestrian volume as a dependent variable and the weather and physical environment as independent variables. We constructed 28 models and compared the results to determine the effects of weather on pedestrian volume by season, land use, and time zone. A negative binomial regression model was used because the dependent variable did not have a normal distribution. The results show that weather affects the volume of walking. Rain reduced walking volume in most models, and snow and thunderstorms reduced the volume in a small number of models. The effects of the weather depended on the season and land use, and the effects of environmental factors depended on the season. The results have various policy implications. First, it is necessary to provide semi-outdoor urban spaces that can cope with snow or rain. Second, it is necessary to have different policies to encourage walking for each season.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.37 no.7
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• pp.420-433
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to improve the calibration matrixes of 2-D and 3-D convective rainfall rates (CRR) using the brightness temperature of the infrared $10.8{\mu}m$ channel (IR), the difference of brightness temperatures between infrared $10.8{\mu}m$ and vapor $6.7{\mu}m$ channels (IR-WV), and the normalized reflectance of the visible channel (VIS) from the COMS satellite and rainfall rate from the weather radar for the period of 75 rainy days from April 22, 2011 to October 22, 2011 in Korea. Especially, the rainfall rate data of the weather radar are used to validate the new 2-D and 3-DCRR calibration matrixes suitable for the Korean peninsula for the period of 24 rainy days in 2011. The 2D and 3D calibration matrixes provide the basic and maximum CRR values ($mm\;h^{-1}$) by multiplying the rain probability matrix, which is calculated by using the number of rainy and no-rainy pixels with associated 2-D (IR, IR-WV) and 3-D (IR, IR-WV, VIS) matrixes, by the mean and maximum rainfall rate matrixes, respectively, which is calculated by dividing the accumulated rainfall rate by the number of rainy pixels and by the product of the maximum rain rate for the calibration period by the number of rain occurrences. Finally, new 2-D and 3-D CRR calibration matrixes are obtained experimentally from the regression analysis of both basic and maximum rainfall rate matrixes. As a result, an area of rainfall rate more than 10 mm/h is magnified in the new ones as well as CRR is shown in lower class ranges in matrixes between IR brightness temperature and IR-WV brightness temperature difference than the existing ones. Accuracy and categorical statistics are computed for the data of CRR events occurred during the given period. The mean error (ME), mean absolute error (MAE), and root mean squire error (RMSE) in new 2-D and 3-D CRR calibrations led to smaller than in the existing ones, where false alarm ratio had decreased, probability of detection had increased a bit, and critical success index scores had improved. To take into account the strong rainfall rate in the weather events such as thunderstorms and typhoon, a moisture correction factor is corrected. This factor is defined as the product of the total precipitable waterby the relative humidity (PW RH), a mean value between surface and 500 hPa level, obtained from a numerical model or the COMS retrieval data. In this study, when the IR cloud top brightness temperature is lower than 210 K and the relative humidity is greater than 40%, the moisture correction factor is empirically scaled from 1.0 to 2.0 basing on PW RH values. Consequently, in applying to this factor in new 2D and 2D CRR calibrations, the ME, MAE, and RMSE are smaller than the new ones.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.744-758
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• 2009

The characteristics of brightness temperature (BT) of infrared and water vapor channels from MTSAT-1R have been investigated using 12 persistent and frequent lightning cases selected from the summer lightnings of 2006-2008. The infrared (IR1, 10.3-11.3 ${\mu}M$) and water vapor (WV, 6.5-7.0 ${\mu}M$) channels from the MTSAT-1R and the lightning observation data from Korea Meteorological Administration are used. When there is no lightning, the BTs of the IR1 and WV channels show the largest frequency at around 290-295K and 245K, respectively. On the other hand, the BTs of two channels show the largest frequency at 215K caused by strong convection when there is lightning. As a result, the WV-IR1 difference (BTDWI) sharply increases from -50K to 0K. Although it depends on the evolution stage of thunderstorms, the lightning mainly occurs at the core of circular convection in the mesoscale convective complex (MCC), whereas the lightning occurs by concentrated line-shape in the squall line. A strong positive correlation exists between the lightning frequency and the BT in the MCC regardless of the BT, but only at the very cold BT in the squall line. In general, the characteristics of BT are well defined for the lightning occurring in the concentrated line, but they are not well defined in the MCC, especially during the decaying stage of MCC. When they are defined well, the lightning occurs when the BTs of IR1 and WV are lower than 215K, BTDWI is near -3 to 1K, and local standard deviation of IR1 decreases to around 1K.