Asian Dust Events in Korea over Historical Times

It has long been recognized that dust was transported a long distance from Asian desert regions over Korea to the North Pacific Ocean. It was, however, not until a hundred years that Asian dust was considered as a meteorological phenomenon. It used to be documented as a kind of natural disaster in ancient historical books. The oldest record regarding dust was "dust rain" observed in AD 174. There were just 6 more cases of dust-related records found during the next several hundreds years. The number of records had substantially increased since then. For the next thousand years or so from 918 to 1910, over 100 records of dust phenomena were found including pure dust and those associated with rain, snow, fog, or hail. These records exhibited dust events have occurred the most frequently in springtime and sporadically took place in wintertime, which was also confirmed by the result of meteorological observations beginning in the early of the 20th century. The details of synoptic and climatologic feature of dust events in Korea through historical times will be discussed in the meeting.