제 15 호 Can Anyone on Earth Forecast Korea’s Weather Correctly?
Kicker : SCIENCE
Can Anyone on Earth Forecast Korea’s Weather Correctly?
Erroneous Weather News is Not Entirely the Korea Meteorological Administration’s Fault
Do-Hyuk Kim, Reporter
If you go out and ask any near passerby about this summer, I believe every single person you ask will strongly emphasize that ‘it is the most stressful summer in recent years.’ Even if you have checked that there’s no heavy rain upcoming this evening, it is premature to forget about your big umbrella you left behind at home because the weather forecast channels change their minds every single hour and swap their former ‘Sunny’ expectation to ‘Sudden Downpour.’ It is not particularly surprising to see weather forecast channels guessing the wrong way, but this summer’s daily forecasts exceptionally went wrong and got rectified in a minute all day long during this rainy season. By the way, weird forms of everlasting rainy season caused catastrophic damage to many people’s lives, especially in Seoul. Seoul has one of the highest densities of population on earth and suffered from the heaviest rain ever recorded since the day weather forecast begun in South Korea, which led to record breaking property damages. What is going on at the ceiling of this country? Why has everyone failed to estimate pending weather conditions of this nation, including foreign weather forecast channels – those of which previously recorded high accuracies unlike the Korean ones?
There Are Some Causes Derived from Korea’s Characteristics to Blame
In 2021, the Korean Meteorological Administration – which makes overall report of South Korea’s weather forecast – only succeeded forty six percent of guessing weather correctly during the whole year. That means the main weather forecast of Korea got more wrong than expecting upcoming weather correctly. This was no surprise though, because we were already familiar with erroneous weather forecasts. But wrong weather forecast can lead inconvenience to lots of people, and even lead to catastrophe like August’s massive downpour. Forecasting South Korea’s weather was notorious for its difficulty of making forecast correctly, mainly because of the Korean Peninsula’s unique geographical characteristics. South Korea consists of lots of mountains in its territory, which is around seventy percent. This big number includes a series of subsidiary mountains linked from huge mountain ranges such as the Taebaek Mountains. Unexpected local precipitation, which was a massive trouble this summer, usually occurs when hot, humid atmosphere meets high topographies.
Not only geographical characteristics contribute to the unpredictable Korean weather, but also the weather prediction model imported from other countries. The Korean Meteorological Administration has used super computers to predict upcoming weather since 2000, and adopted a weather prediction model made by Japan. Then they switched to a model built by the British in 2010, but criticism then surged because those systems were not suited to Korea’s environment. To address this issue, a Korea-specific weather prediction model called ‘KIM’ (Korean Integrated Model) was invented in 2020. At last, after two years of operation experience, KIM once again advanced into ‘RDAPS-KIM’ (Regional Data Assimilation and Prediction System). The new system shortened weather report’s refresh period to one hour and boasts sixteen times more detailed forecasts in a specific area.
Sadly, though, despite all of these efforts being true, the Korean Meteorological Administration is still being highly criticized for their low accuracy rate. RDAPS-KIM just made its debut this May, so the system covered this summer, but results were not that impressive and accuracy still falls short. It hints to us that a fundamental problem that we have not yet thought of is causing this confusion.
Unusual Climate Changes Are Caused Because of the ‘Blocking Pattern’
The genuine cause of this uncanny, unexpected wizardry is ‘blocking pattern.’ It sounds intriguing yet unfamiliar, because it is the first time for Koreans to feel the effect of this occurrence indeed. Blocking pattern literally means blocking high pressure that arrives at summer refuses to retreat while cutting off both conventional hot high pressure and cold low pressure to gradually exert its influence over the Korean peninsula. It is not strictly true to say the appearance of a blocking pattern is completely foreign, but it is possible to say everyone acknowledged about climate issues we are all confronted with.
The blocking pattern which appeared this August made a seasonal rain front between high pressure and low pressure with no-where to go, leading it to stay longer at the rooftop of the Korean peninsula. In normal cases, spreading high pressure among the Korean peninsula should demolish a seasonal rain front while bringing a typical hot and dry summer climate. This whole episode eventually recorded a remarkable downpour, but that is not the end of the story.
Last summer was especially humid even without rain, and that is also because of the blocking pattern. Humid atmosphere visited from the south of the Korean peninsula constantly loomed around like a shadow during this summer, enticed water vapor to collect aerially. High humidity cranked up the heat index, making people exhausted even more. These tiring days did not just stop when daylight was ongoing, but got even worse when darkness fell. Tropical night was always an unwanted guest accompanied with the Korean summer starting from late July to the middle of August, but this year things were even worse because of intolerably high humidity. Last August there were continuous torturous days with midnight’s excessively high heat index reaching a whopping thirty degrees, which is insane and caused several thermal sicknesses especially to the elderly. All of these were due to the blocking pattern remaining in South Korea during the whole summer of 2022.
Blocking Pattern Appearing Everywhere Around the Globe
The bad news does not stop there. This blocking pattern does not only belong to the Korean peninsula, but is ranging globally and already bringing severe aftermath to several countries worldwide. The United Kingdom recently suffered from consistent fire because of a heatwave, leading the fire brigade to announce emergency status. Other European nations, such as Spain and France recorded surface temperatures of fifty degrees. North America is also under the influence of a blocking pattern, especially affecting the western part of United States. Increasing temperature in the polar regions made glaciers to melt, also compensating temperature differences between high and low latitudes interrupted the circulation of atmospheres making blocking patterns firmly stick in their places all over the globe. Humanity is currently stuck in this cycle of endless downfall.
Never before have we thought about climate changes critically. It was considered as a pending problem that we would eventually face in the future. But all of a sudden, these climate issues threw away their disguises and appeared in front of us as an imminent issue. The recent summer in South Korea was treacherous to everyone living in this country, with the outrageous heatwave threatening the elderly and toddlers to become dehydrated or catch thermal illnesses. Ordinary people got their livings damaged because of unexpectedly strong, record-breaking torrential rain. Lots of local businesses were completely totaled by being flooded all around their business sites. Weather problems, for now, just became a big deal for everyone. The summer of 2022 was pretty harsh for all Koreans, but I am certain that a single glimpse at other countries about what this summer has done to them makes us alert about the urgent need of preparation to slow down global warming. The Paris Agreement confirmed that we should unite to save our earth from overheating, but it seems that current efforts are not enough. Weather forecast channels constantly expecting erroneously might be a revelation of disastrous climate renovation. We all need to consider saving our planet as the urgent, prioritized option when deciding economic resolutions and constantly be concerned about the environment. That might not improve the accuracy of the Korean weather forecast, but at least it will not get worse.
Sources: https://www.bbc.com/korean/45351500
https://blog.naver.com/kma_131/222818509238
https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/basic
https://www.greenpeace.org/korea/update/23683/blog-ce-extreme-climate-hazards/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8oMup6Fsh8&t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVgSvffOFW8
http://www.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/View/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_CD=A0002851739
https://www.donga.com/news/Society/article/all/20220518/113472487/1
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/how-weather-works/high-and-low-pressure/blocks
https://img2.daumcdn.net/thumb/R658x0.q70/?fname=https://t1.daumcdn.net/news/202208/08/munhwa/20220808112543500obat.jpg (Image 1)
https://www.weather.gov/images/jetstream/constant/omega_wx.png (Image 2)
