A review of the National Groundwater Monitoring Network in Korea

The drastic expansion of cities and the rapid economic growth in Korea have caused dramatic increases to demand from groundwater supplies for drinking, domestic, agricultural and industrial water usage. The Ministry of Construction and Transportation and the Korea Water Resources Corporation have constructed and operated the National Groundwater Monitoring Network (NGMN) throughout the country since 1995. The NGMN, an official project establishing a total of 320 groundwater monitoring stations, was completed in 2005. Each national groundwater monitoring station serves as a baseline and primary station to monitor long‐term general trends in water‐level fluctuations and in groundwater quality. The present NGMN and its monitoring capabilities were evaluated to enhance the efficiency of groundwater monitoring and to meet the new societal conditions. Based on reviews and evaluations, some suggestions and recommendations are made with regard to improvements of the national network, including the installation of rainfall gauges in groundwater monitoring stations, gathering groundwater data every hour instead of every 6 h as at present, involving major cations and anions in the regular and periodic chemical analyses, regular periodic analyses of collected groundwater data, and construction of 199 additional groundwater monitoring stations to supplement the existing groundwater monitoring network. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Wave propagation velocity under a vertically vibrated surface foundation

The ultimate objective of the research conducted by the authors is to explore the feasibility of determining reliable in situ values of soil modulus as a function of strain. In field experiments, an excitation is applied on the ground surface using large‐scale shakers, and the response of the soil deposit is recorded through receivers embedded in the soil. The focus of this paper is on the simulation and observation of signals that would be recorded at the receiver locations under idealized conditions to provide guidelines on the interpretation of the field measurements. Discrete models are used to reproduce one‐dimensional and three‐dimensional geometries. When the first times of arrival are detected by receivers under the vertical impulse, they coincide with the arrival of the P wave; therefore related to the constrained modulus of the material. If one considers, on the other hand, phase differences between the motions at two receivers, the picture is far more complicated and one would obtain propagation velocities, function of frequency and measuring location, which do not correspond to either the constrained modulus or Young's modulus. It is necessary then to conduct more rigorous and complicated analyses in order to interpret the data. This paper discusses and illustrates these points. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Magnetospheric convection at a low level power ϵ

It is demonstrated that the magnetospheric convection becomes evident in terms of the AE index only when the power ? of the solar wind-magnetosphere dynamo becomes greater than ～ 10¹⁸ erg s^?1 or a slightly lower value. An enhanced conductivity is a crucial factor for the magnetospheric convection to manifest even in a low-level increase of the AE index of ～ 50–100 γ.     

On the variation of frequency-based rainfall amounts: a case study for evaluating recent extreme rainfalls in Korea

Extreme rainfall events recently occurring in Korea have been shown to change frequency-based rainfall amounts quite significantly. Regardless of the reason for these extremes, the general concern of most hydrologists is how to handle these events for practical applications in Hydrology. Our study aim is to evaluate these extremes with their effect on frequency-based rainfall amounts, especially if they can be assumed to be within normal levels. As there is no commonly accepted methodology to be applied to this kind of study, we follow simplified steps such as: (1) estimation of the climatological variance of frequency-based rainfall amounts, (2) estimation of confidence intervals of frequency-based rainfall amounts (lower and upper bounds for the 5 and 1% significance levels estimated using the climatological variance), and (3) evaluation of the effect of extra rainfall events on the frequency-based rainfall amounts. Twelve stations on the Korean peninsula are selected as they have relatively longer data length. The annual maximum rainfall data collected from 1954 to 1998 are used. From this study we concluded that (1) at least 30 years of data length should be used for the frequency analysis in order to assure the stability of the variance of frequency-based rainfall amounts, (2) the climatological variances estimated all range from 5 to 8% of the frequency-based rainfall amounts, and (3) even though the frequency-based rainfall amount seems to become extreme with seemingly abnormal events, it still remains under its upper bound for the 5 or 1% significance levels estimated using the climatological variance, as well as it decays exponentially to the normal level as extra events are added. Thus, we conclude that we do not need to panic over seemingly abnormal events occurring so far, but just need to consider the variability inherent in frequency-based rainfall amounts.     

Application of an artificial neural network for a direct estimation of atmospheric instability from a next-generation imager

Atmospheric instability information derived from satellites plays an important role in short-term weather forecasting,especially the forecasting of severe convective storms. For the next generation of weather satellites for Korea's multi-purpose geostationary satellite program, a new imaging instrument has been developed. Although this imaging instrument is not designed to perform full sounding missions and its capability is limited, its multi-spectral infrared channels provide information on vertical sounding. To take full advantage of the observation data from the much improved spatiotemporal resolution of the imager, the feasibility of an artificial neural network approach for the derivation of the atmospheric instability is investigated.The multi-layer perceptron model with a feed-forward and back-propagation training algorithm shows quite a sensitive response to the selection of the training dataset and model architecture. Through an extensive performance test with a carefully selected training dataset of 7197 independent profiles, the model architectures are selected to be 12, 5000, and 0.3 for the number of hidden nodes, number of epochs, and learning rate, respectively. The selected model gives a mean absolute error,RMSE, and correlation coefficient of 330 J kg~(-1), 420 J kg~(-1), and 0.9, respectively. The feasibility is further demonstrated via application of the model to real observation data from a similar instrument that has comparable observation channels with the planned imager.     

Future changes in drought characteristics over South Korea using multi regional climate models with the standardized precipitation index

In this study, the projection of future drought conditions is estimated over South Korea based on the latest and most advanced sets of regional climate model simulations under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) scenarios, within the context of the national downscaling project of the Republic of Korea. The five Regional Climate Models (RCMs) are used to produce climate-change simulations around the Korean Peninsula and to estimate the uncertainty associated with these simulations. The horizontal resolution of each RCM is 12.5 km and model simulations are available for historical (1981-2010) and future (2021-2100) periods under forcing from the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. To assess the characteristics of drought on multiple time scales in the future, we use Standardized Precipitation Indices for 1-month (SPI- 1), 6-month (SPI-6) and 12-month (SPI-12). The number of drought months in the future is shown to be characterized by strong variability, with both increasing and decreasing trends among the scenarios. In particular, the number of drought months over South Korea is projected to increase (decrease) for the period 2041-2070 in the RCP8.5 (RCP4.5) scenario and increase (decrease) for the period 2071-2100 in the RCP4.5 (RCP8.5) scenario. In addition, the percentage area under any drought condition is overall projected to gradually decrease over South Korea during the entire future period, with the exception of SPI-1 in the RCP4.5 scenario. Particularly, the drought areas for SPI-1 in the RCP4.5 scenario show weakly positive long-term trend. Otherwise, future changes in drought areas for SPI-6 and SPI-12 have a marked downward trend under the two RCP scenarios.     

Projections of high resolution climate changes for South Korea using multiple-regional climate models based on four RCP scenarios. Part 2: precipitation

Precipitation changes over South Korea were projected using five regional climate models (RCMs) with a horizontal resolution of 12.5 km for the mid and late 21st century (2026-2050, 2076- 2100) under four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) scenarios against present precipitation (1981-2005). The simulation data of the Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model version 2 coupled with the Atmosphere-Ocean (HadGEM2-AO) was used as boundary data of RCMs. In general, the RCMs well simulated the spatial and seasonal variations of present precipitation compared with observation and HadGEM2-AO. Equal Weighted Averaging without Bias Correction (EWA_NBC) significantly reduced the model biases to some extent, but systematic biases in results still remained. However, the Weighted Averaging based on Taylor’s skill score (WEA_Tay) showed a good statistical correction in terms of the spatial and seasonal variations, the magnitude of precipitation amount, and the probability density. In the mid-21st century, the spatial and interannual variabilities of precipitation over South Korea are projected to increase regardless of the RCP scenarios and seasons. However, the changes in area-averaged seasonal precipitation are not significant due to mixed changing patterns depending on locations. Whereas, in the late 21st century, the precipitation is projected to increase proportionally to the changes of net radiative forcing. Under RCP8.5, WEA_Tay projects the precipitation to be increased by about +19.1, +20.5, +33.3% for annual, summer and winter precipitation at 1-5% significance levels, respectively. In addition, the probability of strong precipitation (≥ 15 mm d^-1) is also projected to increase significantly, particularly in WEA_Tay under RCP8.5.     

Factors controlling carbon isotope ratios of dissolved inorganic carbon in two major tributaries of the Han River,Korea

Understanding the carbon cycle of the Han River system in Korea is of prime interest in managing and preserving this valuable water resource for more than 20 million residents in the area. As a part of a comprehensive carbon cycling study for the Han River system, this report focuses on the carbon isotope compositions of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in its two major tributaries, the North and the South Han Rivers. The major difference in carbonate chemistry of the tributaries originates primarily from the lithology of the catchment areas. The South Han River, draining a carbonate‐dominant terrain, has much higher alkalinities and DIC concentrations, whereas the lower concentrations in the North Han River indicate little influence of carbonate weathering. Likewise, δ¹³C_DIC values in the South Han River indicate that the DIC input from the carbonate rocks is important in controlling carbon isotope ratios of DIC. For the North Han River, the oxidation of organic material influences the amount of riverine DIC and δ¹³C_DIC values to a greater extent. Overall, remarkable seasonal and spatial variations of river chemistry and carbon isotope compositions of DIC reflect the variability in geo‐hydrologic characteristics, in the water regime, and in metabolic activities in the river water and/or the drainage areas. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.