Impact of Sea Surface Temperature and Surface Air Temperature on Maximizing Typhoon Rainfall: Focusing on Typhoon Maemi in Korea

In this study, the effects of surface air temperature (SAT) and sea surface temperature (SST) changes on typhoon rainfall maximization are analysed. Based on the numerically reproduced Typhoon Maemi, this study tried to maximize the typhoon-induced rainfall by increasing the amount of saturated water vapour in the atmosphere and the amount of water vapour entering the typhoon. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, which is one of the regional climate models (RCMs), the rainfall simulated by WRF while increasing the SAT and SST to various sizes at initial conditions and boundary conditions of the model was analysed. As a result of the simulated typhoon rainfall, the spatial distribution of total rainfall depth on the land due to the increase combination of SAT and SST showed a wide variety without showing a certain pattern. This is attributed to the geographical location of the Korean peninsula, which is a peninsula between the continent and the ocean. In other words, under certain conditions, typhoons may drop most of the rainfall on the southern sea of the peninsula before landing on the peninsula. For instance, the 6-hour duration maximum precipitation (MP) in Busan Metropolitan City was 472.1 mm when the SST increased by 2.0°C. However, when the SST increased by 4.0°C, the MP was found to be 395.3 mm, despite the further increase in SST. This indicates that the MP at a particular area and the increase in temperature do not have a linear relationship. Therefore, in order to maximize typhoon rainfall, it is necessary to repeat the numerical experiment on various conditions and search for the combination of SAT and SST increase which is most suitable for the target typhoon

Hydraulic and Hydrologic Analysis for Washland Construction in Woopo Wetland Area, Korea

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Development and Application of Urban Landslide Vulnerability Assessment Methodology Reflecting Social and Economic Variables

An urban landslide vulnerability assessment methodology is proposed with major focus on considering urban social and economic aspects. The proposed methodology was developed based on the landslide susceptibility maps that Korean Forest Service utilizes to identify landslide source areas. Frist, debris flows are propagated to urban areas from such source areas by Flow-R (flow path assessment of gravitational hazards at a regional scale), and then urban vulnerability is assessed by two categories: physical and socioeconomic aspect. The physical vulnerability is related to buildings that can be impacted by a landslide event. This study considered two popular building structure types, reinforced-concrete frame and nonreinforced-concrete frame, to assess the physical vulnerability. The socioeconomic vulnerability is considered a function of the resistant levels of the vulnerable people, trigger factor of secondary damage, and preparedness level of the local government. An index-based model is developed to evaluate the life and indirect damage under landslide as well as the resilience ability against disasters. To illustrate the validity of the proposed methodology, physical and socioeconomic vulnerability levels are analyzed for Seoul, Korea, using the suggested approach. The general trend found in this study indicates that the higher population density areas under a weaker fiscal condition that are located at the downstream of mountainous areas are more vulnerable than the areas in opposite conditions

Development and Application of Urban Landslide Vulnerability Assessment Methodology Reflecting Social and Economic Variables

An urban landslide vulnerability assessment methodology is proposed with major focus on considering urban social and economic aspects. The proposed methodology was developed based on the landslide susceptibility maps that Korean Forest Service utilizes to identify landslide source areas. Frist, debris flows are propagated to urban areas from such source areas by Flow-R (flow path assessment of gravitational hazards at a regional scale), and then urban vulnerability is assessed by two categories: physical and socioeconomic aspect. The physical vulnerability is related to buildings that can be impacted by a landslide event. This study considered two popular building structure types, reinforced-concrete frame and nonreinforced-concrete frame, to assess the physical vulnerability. The socioeconomic vulnerability is considered a function of the resistant levels of the vulnerable people, trigger factor of secondary damage, and preparedness level of the local government. An index-based model is developed to evaluate the life and indirect damage under landslide as well as the resilience ability against disasters. To illustrate the validity of the proposed methodology, physical and socioeconomic vulnerability levels are analyzed for Seoul, Korea, using the suggested approach. The general trend found in this study indicates that the higher population density areas under a weaker fiscal condition that are located at the downstream of mountainous areas are more vulnerable than the areas in opposite conditions

Development and Application of Urban Landslide Vulnerability Assessment Methodology Reflecting Social and Economic Variables

An urban landslide vulnerability assessment methodology is proposed with major focus on considering urban social and economic aspects. The proposed methodology was developed based on the landslide susceptibility maps that Korean Forest Service utilizes to identify landslide source areas. Frist, debris flows are propagated to urban areas from such source areas by Flow-R (flow path assessment of gravitational hazards at a regional scale), and then urban vulnerability is assessed by two categories: physical and socioeconomic aspect. The physical vulnerability is related to buildings that can be impacted by a landslide event. This study considered two popular building structure types, reinforced-concrete frame and nonreinforced-concrete frame, to assess the physical vulnerability. The socioeconomic vulnerability is considered a function of the resistant levels of the vulnerable people, trigger factor of secondary damage, and preparedness level of the local government. An index-based model is developed to evaluate the life and indirect damage under landslide as well as the resilience ability against disasters. To illustrate the validity of the proposed methodology, physical and socioeconomic vulnerability levels are analyzed for Seoul, Korea, using the suggested approach. The general trend found in this study indicates that the higher population density areas under a weaker fiscal condition that are located at the downstream of mountainous areas are more vulnerable than the areas in opposite conditions

Meteorological Extremes in Korea: Prediction, Assessment, and Impact

The extreme climates that occur around the world every year have a profound impact on the quality of life for mankind since they can cause natural disasters beyond our control, such as droughts and floods [...

Estimation of Future Probable Maximum Precipitation in Korea Using Multiple Regional Climate Models

In this study, future probable maximum precipitations (PMPs) based on future meteorological variables produced from three regional climate models (RCMs) of 50-km spatial resolution provided by Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) are projected. In order to estimate future PMPs, the hydro-meteorological method is applied. The key future meteorological variable used to analyze the rate of change of future PMPs is the dew-point temperature. Future 12-h persistence 100-year return period extreme dew-point temperatures obtained from future daily dew-point temperature time series by using the scale-invariance method are applied to estimate future PMPs. As a result of estimating future PMPs using several RCMs and representative concentration pathways (RCPs) scenarios, the spatial distribution of future PMPs is expected to be similar to that of the present, but PMPs tend to increase in the future. In addition, it can be seen that the difference in PMPs estimated from various RCMs and RCP scenarios is getting bigger in the future. Especially after 2070, the difference has increased even more. In the short term, it is proposed to establish climate change adaptation policies with an 18% increase in PMPs, which is the ensemble average in the future year 2050

Ecological Drought Condition Index to Monitor Vegetation Response to Meteorological Drought in Korean Peninsula

Droughts caused by meteorological factors such as a long-term lack of precipitation can propagate into several types of drought through the hydrological cycle. Among them, a phenomenon in which drought has a significant impact on the ecosystem can be defined as an ecological drought. In this study, the Ecological Drought Condition Index-Vegetation (EDCI-veg) was newly proposed to quantitatively evaluate and monitor the effects of meteorological drought on vegetation. A copula-based bivariate joint probability distribution between vegetation information and drought information was constructed, and EDCI-veg was derived from the joint probability model. Through the proposed EDCI-veg, it was possible to quantitatively estimate how much the vegetation condition was affected by the drought, and to identify the timing of the occurrence of the vegetation drought and the severity of the vegetation drought. In addition, as a result of examining the applicability of the proposed EDCI-veg by comparing past meteorological drought events with the corresponding vegetation conditions, it was found that EDCI-veg can reasonably monitor vegetation drought. It has been shown that the newly proposed EDCI-veg in this study can provide useful information on the ecological drought condition that changes with time. On the other hand, the ecological drought analysis based on the type of land cover showed that the response of vegetation to meteorological drought was different depending on the land cover. In particular, it was revealed that the vegetation inhabiting the forest has a relatively high resistance to meteorological drought