Analysis of severe weather detection in the metropolitan area of Korea using X-Band weather radar

It is very important  to detect hazardous small scale weather phenomena occurred in highly populated areas because of its catastrophic damages. In order to monitor these local events and provide appropriate information about high impact weather, the Weather Radar Center of the Korea Meteorological Administration has installed the X-band radar netwGork consisting of three dual-polarization radars with the solid state power amplifier (SSPA) over the metropolitan area in October 2018. These radars are operating with three elevation angles per 1 minute and 150m gate size. 

In this study, we investigated severe weather cases that occurred in the Seoul metropolitan area by the analysis of data from the X-band weather radar observation network. The first case is  a strong convective event that led flash flood and many casualties over the central area of Seoul city within a 6-hour period in August 2022.  The second one is the tornado case that occurred in September 2020. Although it is a rare event on the Korean Peninsula, the high spatial and temporal resolution data of the X-band weather radar observation network can provide detailed characteristics of hazardous weather.  In particular, the X-Band network yielded better results compared with the S-Band weather radar observation network through the high spatio-temporal resolution.

In this study, we have found out some benefits of the X-band radar network when we explore the rapid developing small scale convective events. Since the X-band frequency has more attenuation for heavy precipitation and lose signals in wet radom condition, quality control and correction are essential to the performance of the products. Therefore, QC and quantitative estimation of heavy rainfall will be the main objectives of our future study.  

 

Acknowledgements:

This research was supported by the "Development of radar based severe weather monitoring technology (KMA2021-03221)" of "Development of analysis technologies for local-scale weather radar network and next generation radar" project funded by the Weather Radar Center, Korea Meteorological Administration.