The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA; ) is the national meteorological service of

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

. The service started in 1904 joining the WMO in 1956.

Numerical weather prediction Numerical weather prediction (NWP) uses mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to weather forecasting, predict the weather based on current weather conditions. Though first attempted in the 1920s, it was not until the advent of comput ...

is performed using the

Unified Model The Unified Model is a numerical weather prediction and climate modeling software suite originally developed by the United Kingdom Met Office from 1990 and now both used and further developed by many weather-forecasting agencies around the world. ...

software suite.

History

The current administration was established in 1990. Temporary observatories set up in 1904 in Busan, Incheon, Mokpo and elsewhere were precursors to the current KMA. The Central Meteorological Office (CMO) was established in August 1949. In April 1978, CMO was renamed the Korea Meteorological Service (KMS). In 1999, the administration introduced a meteorological

supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...

for forecasting. As of November 2021, supercomputers ''Guru'' and ''Maru'' ranked 27th and 28th respectively in the world. In 2010, the KMA launched South Korea’s first geostationary meteorological satellite, the Communication, Ocean and Meteorological Satellite (COMS), also known as Chollian. Chollian started its official operation in 2011. The Seoul and Busan observatories were recognized as Centennial Observing Stations in 2017 by the World Meteorological Administration (WMO). In 2019, the administration completed developing its own numerical weather prediction model.

Weather radar project

In 2013, US-based Enterprise Electronics Corporation (EEC) out of

Enterprise, Alabama Enterprise is a city in the southeastern part of Coffee County, Alabama, Coffee County and the southwestern part of Dale County, Alabama, Dale County in Southeastern Alabama, United States. Its population was 28,711 at the 2020 United States cen ...

won a contract to deliver 11

S-band The S band is a designation by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for a part of the microwave band of the electromagnetic spectrum covering frequencies from 2 to 4 gigahertz (GHz). Thus it crosses the convention ...

Klystron A klystron is a specialized linear-beam vacuum tube, invented in 1937 by American electrical engineers Russell and Sigurd Varian,Pond, Norman H. "The Tube Guys". Russ Cochran, 2008 p.31-40 which is used as an amplifier for high radio frequenci ...

Dual-Polarization Doppler

Weather radar A weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar (WSR) and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation (meteorology), precipitation, calculate its motion, and estimate its type (rain, snow, hail etc.). Modern w ...

systems to the KMA. The radars will be installed across the country as a means of providing for complete weather radar coverage over the entire country.

Locations

The headquarters is in

Daebang-dong Daebang-dong () is a '' dong'' (neighborhood) of Dongjak District, Seoul, South Korea. See also *Administrative divisions of South Korea South Korea is made up of 22 first-tier administrative divisions: 6 List of special cities of South Kore ...

Dongjak District Dongjak District () is one of the 25 districts that make up the city of Seoul, South Korea. Its name was derived from the Dongjaegi Naruteo Ferry, on the Han River which borders the district to the north. It was the 17th ''gu'' created in S ...

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

. Co-working organs include mainly 5 categories: regional office of KMA,

weather stations A weather station is a facility, either on land or sea, with instruments and equipment for measuring atmospheric conditions to provide information for weather forecasts and to study the weather and climate. The measurements taken include tempera ...

, observatories and Joint office for Meteorological observation.Order of Ministry of Environment(Revised in 2008.10.22)- KMA and organization set-up

References

External links

KMA homepage

KMA on www.top500.org

The National Institute of Meteorological Research
{{Authority control Governmental meteorological agencies in Asia Government agencies of South Korea Climate of South Korea