Research Article Climatological Features of Korea-Landfalling Tropical Cyclones
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Hindawi Publishing Corporation Advances in Meteorology Volume 2016, Article ID 5051476, 15 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/5051476 Research Article Climatological Features of Korea-Landfalling Tropical Cyclones Jae-Won Choi,1 Yumi Cha,2 Hae-Dong Kim,3 and Sung-Dae Kang4 1 National Institute of Meteorological Research, Jeju 63568, Republic of Korea 2National Typhoon Center, Korea Meteorological Administration, Jeju 63614, Republic of Korea 3Department of Global Environment, Keimyung University, Daegu 42601, Republic of Korea 4Green Simulation, Co., Ltd., SK HUB-SKY, 1523 Jungangdae-ro, Dongrae-gu, Busan 46227, Republic of Korea Correspondence should be addressed to Hae-Dong Kim; [email protected] Received 6 July 2015; Accepted 24 August 2015 Academic Editor: Xiaofeng Li Copyright © 2016 Jae-Won Choi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The present study analyzed the interdecadal variation by applying the statistical change-point analysis to the frequency of the tropical cyclone (TC) that landed in the Korean Peninsula (KP) for the recent 54 years (1951 to 2004) and performed cluster classification of the Korea-landfall TC tracks using a Fuzzy Clustering Method (FCM). First, in the interdecadal variation analysis, frequency of TC that landed in the KP was largely categorized into three periods: high frequency period from 1951 to 1965, low frequency period from 1966 to 1985, and high frequency period from 1986 to 2004. The cluster analysis result of the Korea-landfall TC tracks produced the optimum number of clusters as four. In more detail, Cluster A refers to a pattern of landing in the southern coast in the KP starting from East China Sea followed by heading north while Cluster B refers to a pattern of landing in the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, also starting from East China Sea followed by heading north. Cluster C refers to a pattern of landing in the southern region of the west coast in the KP moving from mainland China while Cluster D refers to a pattern of landing in the mid-north region of the west coast in the Korean Peninsula, also moving from mainland China. 1. Introduction studied the characteristics of rainfall due to TC in relation to thetrackorkineticenergy.Leeetal.[6]analyzedthecentral Although many studies on tropical cyclone (TC) that affected pressure and the maximum sustained wind speed statistically theKoreanPeninsulahavebeenconducted[1,2],fewstudies about all the TCs that approached mid-latitude regions in have been done on TC that landed in the Korean Peninsula. East Asia and affected the Korean Peninsula for 30 years As a study on TC that landed in the Korean Peninsula, Choi from 1960 to 1989 thereby classifying the typhoons according and Kim [3] analyzed interannual and interdecadal variation to their movement characteristic and presenting the large- of frequency of TC, track of TC, and intensity of TC, which atmospheric circulations characteristics of the representative landedintheKoreanPeninsulaforrecent54years(1951 case for each category. Kim et al. [7] analyzed the long- to 2004), and conducted analysis of large-scale atmospheric term change of TCs using data obtained from 1951 to circulations with regard to causes of variation of the Korean 2001,proposingthelocationandintensityofthesubtropical Peninsula landed TC activity. Choi et al. [4] also performed western North Pacific high (SWNPH) among the large-scale cluster analysis on TCs that landed in the Korean Peninsula atmospheric circulations as the most influential factors that for recent 54 years using a Fuzzy Clustering Method and affectedthecourseofTC,andstudiedhowthevariationofthe analyzed large-scale atmospheric circulations of the TC track large-scale atmospheric circulations influenced the TC track characteristics for each cluster. that affected the Korean Peninsula. As other studies on TC in Furthermore, Park and Moon [5] analyzed TCs that relation to its damage, Yoo and Jung [8] presented the damage affected the Korean Peninsula, starting from the tropical caused by typhoon “Saomai” and “Prapiroon,” which affected and subtropical western North Pacific, climatologically, and the Korean Peninsula in 2000, and compared them with other 2 Advances in Meteorology typhoons that had similar tracks in the past. Furthermore, Moreover, this study also used the variables of geopo- Park et al. [1] categorized the TC track that affected the tential height (gpm) data from National Centers for Envi- Korean Peninsula into 7 types and showed that typhoons that ronmental Prediction-National Center for Atmospheric affected Korea via China and via Japan accounted for 24.6% Research (NCEP-NCAR) reanalysis [14, 15]. This NCEP- and 22.9%, respectively. That is, they claimed that about 50% NCAR reanalysis data consisted of spatial resolution such as ∘ ∘ of TCs that affected the Korean Peninsula approached Korea latitude and longitude 2.5 × 2.5 and 17 vertical layers. via the neighboring countries. TC is one of the major weather phenomena that incurs 2.2. Methods. In order to detect the significant climate regime human casualties and property damage as it passes through shift of the Korea-landfall TC frequency, this study performed the Korean Peninsula and the surrounding regions mainly in statisticalchange-pointanalysisusedbyHoetal.[16].This June to September, and intensity of typhoon and hurricane statistical method is known to be effective in finding the has been intensified more and more [9, 10]. Weather phenom- significant climate regime shift objectively from time series ena that incurred the most damage in Korea for the last 10 data such as TC frequency. More information about this years (1998 to 2007) are heavy rainfall and TC, which account statistical method can be found in Elsner et al. [17] and Chu for 97% of entire human casualties and 89% of property [18]. damage. In particular, property damage and human casualties As one of the indexes applied to the statistical change- causedbyTCsthatlandedinKoreawere53%and40%[11]. point analysis, Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) was A study on current status analysis of meteorological disasters calculated [19]: that occurred in Korea from 1987 to 2003 [12] showed that 2 2002 had the largest damage due to Typhoon Rusa (0215), = ∑ . (1) Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) 104 about 6.1153 trillion Korean Won (KRW), followed by 2003 of 4.38321 trillion KRW due to Typhoon Maemi (0314). TheACEiscalculatedbysummingthesquaresoftheMSWS In addition, Kwon et al. [13] presented that the damage () of greater than every TS at 6-hour intervals on all the KP caused by typhoon “Rusa” accounted for 0.9% of GDP in landfalling TCs for each corresponding decade. The numbers Korea, which was considerably high compared to the recent are usually divided by 10,000 to make them more manageable. 4 2 economic growth rate. As described above, TCs that landed The unit of ACE is 10 kt and for use as an index, the unit is in Korea caused much damage and incurred economic loss assumed. greatly so that many studies on TCs have been conducted. This study used the Student’s -test to determine signifi- Therefore, the present study also examines the characteristics cance [20]. In case that two independent time series follow a of the Korea-landfall TC activity in order to reduce property distribution and their time averages are denoted as 1 and damage and human casualties caused by the TCs that landed 2, respectively, the test statistic is given by intheKoreanPeninsulaeveryyear. − Thispaperisorganizedasfollows.InSection2,dataand = 1 2 , 2 2 1/2 (2) analysis method are introduced. In Section 3, interannual (1/1 +2/2) and interdecadal variation of the Korea-landfall TC activity are analyzed. In Section 4, cluster analysis is performed with where 1 and 2 are standard deviations and 1 and 2 are the Korea-landfall TC track and analysis of the TC activity numbers of the two time series, respectively. From the above on each classified cluster is conducted. Finally, in Section 5, formula, if the absolute value of is greater than threshold conclusion is presented. values with a level of significance, the null hypothesis would be rejected at the (×100)% significance level. 2. Data and Methods In this study, TC life time was defined as a stage from formation to decay observed in every 6 hours in the best- 2.1. Data. The TC data in this study was obtained from the trackdatafromRSMC-TokyoTyphoonCenter.TCrecurving best-track of TC provided by Regional Specialized Mete- location was defined as a location where direction of TC was orological Center- (RSMC-) Tokyo Typhoon Center. This changed from northwest movement to northeast movement. data consists of TC name, latitude and longitude location of TC, TC central pressure, and TC maximum sustained wind 3. Interannual and Interdecadal Variations speed (MSWS), which were observed in every 6 hours for 54 years from 1951 to 2004. TC is generally classified into four 3.1. Change-Point Analysis. Figure 1 shows total Korea- classes by the criteria of MSWS: Tropical Depression (TD: landfall TC frequency (TDET) and Korea-landfall TC fre- −1 −1 MSWS < 17ms ),TropicalStorm(TS:17ms ≤ MSSWS ≤ quency (TSTY) having intensity above TS, Accumulated −1 −1 24 m s ), Severe Tropical Storm (STS: 25 m s ≤ MSSWS ≤ Cyclone Energy (ACE) for TCs having intensity above TS, −1 −1 32 m s ), and Typhoon (TY: MSSWS ≥ 33 m s ). Along with and Total Moving Distance (TMD) during the TC life. the four classes of TC above, this study included extratropical Overall, all the four indexes showed high values until the cyclone which was transformed from TC for analysis. This mid-1960s while showing low values from the late 1960s till was because such extratropical cyclone also incurred great the mid-1980s and high values again after the late 1980s. In damageonpropertyandhumaninthemid-latituderegions addition to tropical cyclones, it is also of interest to investigate in East Asia.