Development of Hydrometeor Classification Algorithm for Korea Precipitation Systems

Korea Meteorological Administration(KMA) has installed dual polarized radar for Baengnyeongdo (operating purpose) and Yongin testbed (research purpose) since 2014. In addition there is a plan to replace exiting single polarized doppler radars by dual polarized radars until 2019. The purpose of this study is to provide categorized hydrometeor information using polarimetric variables gained from dual polarized radars to prove extreme weather detection and precaution. The Weather Radar Center(WRC) in KMA is providing real time hydrometeor information, which are developed by National Center for Atmospheric Research(NCAR) and National Institute of Meteorological Research(NIMR), applied for the dual polarized radars in Korea. These algorithms, however, are not quite suit for precipitation systems in Korea. Therefore, there are growing needs to optimizing hydrometeor classification methods focused on Korea weather. Hence, the WRC has improved membership function of the NCAR algorithm and developed Korean hydrometeor classification algorithm. This algorithm categorizes seven classes of hydrometeores including non-precipitation, rain, heavy rain, wet snow, dry snow, hail and rain, and crystal. Particularly, the accuracy for wet-snow class was increased due to using 3-Dimensional temperature data of KLAPS (Korea Lacal Analysis and Prediction System, WRF based weather prediction model developed by KMA) as input data. Korean hydrometeor classification algorithm will be improved through more case studies using various types of precipitation, and the achievement will be contributed for real time weather forecast.