3- 1Kongju National University, Kongju National University, Atmospheric Sciences, Korea, Republic of (kan8337@gmail.com)
- 2Global Environment Research Institute, Kongju National University,Korea, Republic of (eunhyuk2@gmail.com)
- 3Kongju National University, Kongju National University, Atmospheric Sciences, Korea, Republic of (joowan.k@gmail.com)
Cold air outbreaks (CAOs), characterized by the southward intrusion of high-latitude cold air into the midlatitudes, often cause severe weather phenomena such as extreme cold waves and heavy snowfall during winter months. This study investigates the critical role of a CAO in a record-breaking heavy snowfall event over the Korean peninsula in November 2024. During the event, the accumulated snowfall was recorded over 43 cm across the central region of the Korean Peninsula for about 3 days, causing severe socioeconomic disasters.
Two days prior to the heavy snowfall event, an upper-level cut-off low generated over eastern Siberia propagated southward, inducing an extreme CAO over the northern Peninsula. The cut-off low enhanced an upper-level frontogenesis with tropopause folding, which transported cold and dry air downward and formed a barotropic cold dome over the region. Concurrently, the Yellow Sea located west of the Korean Peninsula exhibited anomalous high sea surface temperatures, which created an intense air-sea temperature contrast exceeding 17°C. The resulting sensible and latent heat fluxes triggered meso-scale convection, which persistently intruded into the central region of the Korean Peninsula along the southern boundary of the cold dome. It is known that CAO is often accompanied by atmospheric blocking linked to upper-level Rossby wave breaking. In this event, Kamchatka blocking prevented the upper-level cut-off low from propagating eastward and maintained it in a quasi-stationary state during about 3 days. Consequently, the unexpected CAO enhanced by quasi-stationary cut-off low and the persistent snowstorms by lake-effect resulted in the record-breaking heavy snowfall over the Korean Peninsula during early winter.
Our findings demonstrate that upper-level atmospheric circulation patterns, which have received little attention in previous studies, can play a crucial role in heavy snowfall events over the Korean Peninsula.
Key words: Heavy snowfall, Cold air outbreak, cut-off low, air-sea contrast, blocking
This work was funded by the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development Program under Grant (RS-2023-00240346)
How to cite: Oh, Y., Baek, E., and Kim, J.: A role of cold air outbreak in an early winter heavy snowfall event over the Korean Peninsula, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-16164, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-16164, 2026.
