Abstract
The characteristics of the drought occurrence in North Korea over a period of 56 years (1952–2007) were analyzed by region, compared with those of South Korea, and graphed as a drought map for easy detection of the drought’s history. To assess them, the Effective Drought Index (EDI), which was calculated from the daily precipitation data for 109 grids of the Korean Peninsula, was used. The daily precipitation data were extracted from the Asian Precipitation Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration towards Evaluation of Water Resources (APHRODITE). The characteristics of the drought occurrence in North Korea were summed up in the following five points. First, North Korea was divided into four drought sub-regions: the Northeastern region (G1), the Northern region (G2), the Central region (G3), and the Southern region (G4). Second, droughts occurred most frequently in G1 (28) and G4 (28 events) and least frequently in G3 (15 events). Third, in all sub-regions, short-term droughts lasting less than 100 days were the most frequent (53 % or higher) and the longest drought lasted 2,911 days (June 30, 1973 to June 20, 1981), which occurred in G3. Fourth, short-term droughts occurred mainly in spring, mid-term droughts (100–500 days) in spring and summer, and long-term droughts (over 500 days) in summer. Fifth, a dry period (monthly mean EDI <0) appeared in all sub-regions between 1973 and 1981 and between 1990 and 1993, and a strong negative precipitation anomaly appeared during each of these periods. When compared to the droughts in South Korea, those in North Korea were less frequent, but the mean duration was longer. Until 1979, droughts occurred almost at the same time in North Korea as South Korea, but beginning in 1980, the time differences between two regions became larger. Thus, the characteristics of the drought occurrence in North and South Korea differ.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ali G, Rasul G, Mahmood T, Zaman Q, Cheema SB (2012) Validation of APHRODITE precipitation data for humid and sub humid regions of Pakistan. Pak J Meteo 9:57–69
Alley WM (1984) The Palmer drought severity index: limitations and assumptions. J Clim Appl Meteorol 23:1100–1109
Byun HR (1996) On the atmospheric circulation caused the drought in Korea. Asia Pac J Atmos Sci 32:455–469
Byun HR, Han YH (1994) On the existence of the seasonal drought in the Korean Peninsula. Asia Pac J Atmos Sci 30:457–467
Byun HR, Wilhite DA (1999) Objective quantification of drought severity and duration. J Clim 12:2747–2756
Byun HR, Lee SJ, Morid S, Choi KS, Lee SM, Kim DW (2008) Study on the periodicities of droughts in Korea. Asia Pac J Atmos Sci 44:417–441
Choi JY, Lee JJ, Jang MW (2008a) Analysis and mapping of the drought characteristics in North Korea. Seoul National University Press. 217 pp
Choi KS, Kim DW, Byun HR (2008b) Relationships between summer droughts in Korea and activities of tropical cyclones over the Northwestern Pacific. Atmosphere 18:279–286
Choi KS, Kim DW, Byun HR (2009a) Possible impact of spring sea ice anomaly in the North Pacific on the Korean summer drought. Asia Pac J Atmos Sci 45:331–346
Choi KS, Kim DW, Lee JS, Byun HR (2009b) Relationship between Korean drought and North Pacific Oscillation in may. Atmosphere 19:67–78
Choi KS, Oh SB, Kim DW, Byun HR (2010) The south–north oscillation centered on 1996 in Korean summer rainfall variability. Atmosphere 20:91–100
Cruz FT, Narisma GT, Villafuerte MQ II, Cheng Chua KU, Olaguera LM (2013) A climatological analysis of the southwest monsoon rainfall in the Philippines. Amos Res 122:609–616
Dogan S, Berktay A, Singh VP (2012) Comparison of multi-monthly rainfall-based drought severity indices, with application to semi-arid Konya closed basin. Turk J Hydrol 470–471:255–268
Jamandre CA, Narisma GT (2013) Spatio-temporal validation of satellite-based rainfall estimates in the Philipines. Amos Res 122:599–608
Jin SZ, Lee MB, Kim NS, Kim AF, Zhu Z (2010) A study on the flood and drought during 50 years in Hyesan city of North Korea. J Korean Assoc Reg Geogr 16:216–223
Jun KY, Byun HR, Kim DW (2008) Lag-correlation of Korean drought in East Asia. Atmosphere 18:249–266
Karl T, Knight RW (1985) Atlas of monthly palmer hydrological drought indices (1931–1983) for the contiguous United States. Historical Climatology Series 3–7, National Climatic Data Center
Kim YW, Byun HR (2006) On the causes of summer droughts in Korea and their return to normal. Asia Pac J Atmos Sci 42:237–251
Kim S, Park CK, Kim MK (2005) The regime shift of the northern hemispheric circulation responsible for the spring drought in Korea. Asia Pac J Atmos Sci 41:571–585
Kim DW, Byun HR, Choi KS (2009) Evaluation, modification, and application of the effective drought index to 200-year drought climatology of Seoul. Korea J Hydrol 378:1–12
Kim DW, Byun HR, Choi KS, Oh SB (2011) A spatiotemporal analysis of historical droughts in Korea. J Appl Meteorol Climatol 50:1895–1912
Kim YJ, Kang B, Adams JM (2012) Opposite trends in summer precipitation in South and North Korea. Int J Climatol 32:2311–2319
KMA (Korean Meteorological Administration) (2011) 30 years report of meteorological observations in North Korea. Korean Meteorological Administration, 302 pp
Krishnamurti TN, Mishra AK, Simon A, Yatagai A (2009) Use of a dense rain-gauge network over India for improving blended TRMM products and downscaled weather models. J Meteorol Soc Jpn 87A:393–412
Lee SM, Byun HR (2009) Some causes of the May drought over Korea. Asia Pac J Atmos Sci 45:247–264
McKee TB, Doesken NJ, Kleist J (1993) The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. Proc. Eighth Conf. on Applied Climatology, Boston, MA, Amer. Meteor. Soc. 179–184
Min SK, Kwon WT, Park EH, Choi Y (2003) Spatial and temporal comparisons of droughts over Korea with East Asia. Int J Climatol 23:223–233
Morid S, Smakhtin V, Moghaddasi M (2006) Comparison of seven meteorological indices for drought monitoring in Iran. Int J Climatol 26:971–985
Nasrabadi E, Masoodian SA, Asakereh H (2013) Comparison of gridded precipitation time series data in APHRODITE and Asfazari databases within Iran’s territory. Atmos Clim Sci 3:235–248
Oh SB, Kim DW, Choi KS, Lee JS, Byun HR (2010) Prediction of regional drought over Korea using an analog method. Adv Geosci 16:47–59
Palmer WC (1965) Meteorological drought. Weather Bur Res Pap 45:58
Pandey RP, Dash BB, Mishra SK, Singh R (2008) Study of indices for drought characterization in KBK districts in Orissa (India). Hydrol Process 22:1895–1907
Rodionov SN (2006) The use of prewhitening in climate regime shift detection. Geophys Res Lett 33, L12707. doi:10.1029/2006GL025904
Sohn SJ, Tam CY, Ashok K, Ahn JB (2012) Quantifying the reliability of precipitation datasets for monitoring large-scale East Asian precipitation variations. Int J Climatol 32:1520–1526
Tanarhte M, Hadjinicolaou P, Lelieveld J (2012) Intercomparison of temperature and precipitation data sets based on observations in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. J Geophys Res 117, D12102. doi:10.1029/2011JD017293
Yatagai A, Arakawa O, Kamiguchi K, Kawamoto H, Nodzu MI, Hamada A (2009) A 44-year daily gridded precipitation dataset for Asia based on a dense network of rain gauges. Sci Online Lett Atmos 5:137–140
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (No. 2013R1A1A4A01007626). The authors would like to acknowledge the APHRODITE's Water Resources project team for providing the daily precipitation data over Monsoon Asia at their web site http://www.chikyu.ac.jp/precip/. The authors thank Mr. Onyeama Aloysius Chimezie for kindly reviewing the English of the manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lee, BR., Oh, SB. & Byun, HR. The characteristics of drought occurrence in North Korea and its comparison with drought in South Korea. Theor Appl Climatol 121, 199–209 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-014-1230-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-014-1230-z