Introduction the status of Technology Development to Improve Drought Prediction on the Korean Peninsula

Due to global warming and climate change, unusual weather phenomena are occurring frequently in various parts of the world, causing significant damage. For example, in 2022, Seoul on the Korean Peninsula recorded 381.5 mm of daily rainfall on August 8, breaking the record for the highest hourly and daily rainfall in 115 years since meteorological observations began in 1907. In addition, the heavy rainfall was concentrated in a small area for a short period of time, causing strong regional variations and making it very difficult to predict. Meanwhile, the winter of 2022 recorded the lowest January-February precipitation (6.1 mm) since 1973, and the southern region experienced the worst drought in more than 50 years, causing difficulties in agriculture and limited water supply, while the early tropical night and heat wave that began in June brought many socioeconomic damages.
If extreme heat events persist due to global warming, they will lead to meteorological drought, which in turn will lead to agricultural drought, hydrological drought, and socioeconomic drought. In Korea, a joint task force team of the Korea Meteorological Administration, the Ministry of Environment, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs has been operating since 2015 to discuss and issue drought forecasts and warnings for each sector in order to systematically manage water at the national level and strengthen preemptive disaster response.   The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) has been conducting long-term research and development by establishing the Extreme Weather Research Center (Heat waves, Meteorological Droughts, and Chang ma (which is a component of East Asian Monsoon) since 2017 to secure core technologies and foster future human resources to recognize the seriousness of severe weather phenomena on the Korean Peninsula due to climate change and to prepare for them. The technologies developed at the Center are applied to the operational forecasts at KMA
In this study, we introduce the fundamental mechanisms of the meteorological drought occurrence on the Korean Peninsula, flash droughts prediction, droughts outlook techniques, and the current status of 3-6 month long-range forecasting techniques derived from the Droughts Center.