The Climate Research Laboratory focuses on studies of unusual variations in weather and climate, the physical process of climate and its changes, and understanding and predicting the climate and its changes through the application of numerical models. The objectives of these studies are to establish a physical basis for dynamic, long-range weather forecasts on a time scale of one to six months, to predict the global climate over periods of several months to several years, and to assess the response of the climate to natural and man-made influences over the periods of years to decades.
Study of climate variability and climate change
Development of climate prediction and climate change model
Research on climate prediction and long-range forecast
Study of climate change impact and adaptation assessment
Study of extreme climate
Modeling of climate prediction and regional climate
Research on climate prediction and long-range forecast
A study of East Asia monsoon and El Nino
Production of climate change scenarios over globe and Korea
Analysis of future climate change projection
Climate change modeling and a study of climate change mechanism
Research on climate change impact and adaptation for various sectors and regions.

Space and time scales of climate study
Understanding the climate variability is essential to comprehend the mechanism of unusual variations in weather and climate and to improve predicting the climate and its changes. East Asian climate is significantly influenced by various phenomena such as the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO), the Artic Oscillation (AO), and El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
Long-term variation of large scale atmospheric circulation is examined by using observational data to understand those mechanism and impacts.
Various numerical experiments are performed with an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) and a regional climate model (RCM).

30 - 60 - day bandpass-filtered daily
anomalies of 850 hPa wind and OLR are regressed on the precipitation in Korean region during the summer of 1979-2005. Left figure shows that summer rainfall in Korea is associated with strong surge of southwesterly wind from southeastern part of China, which is propagated from tropical region.
Observations, future projections of global and regional climate, are collected to investigate the past, present, and future climate change in East Asia. Data analysis results improve the understanding of atmospheric and climate variability and monitoring of climate change. Analysis is conducted using statistical tool such as EOF, CSEOF, regression, and parametric methods.

Main themes of the studies are
 
Climate processes: Atmosphere, Ocean and Land
Climate predictability: East Asian Monsoon, Intraseasonal Oscillation
Climate system: North Atlantic Oscillation, Artic Oscillation, El Nino/La Nina, Storm track
Climate change: Global warming, Climate change indicator
Climate Extremes: heat wave, drought, heavy rainfall, heavy snowfall, cold surge
Paleoclimate

Analysis result focused on climate change over Korea is used to understand the climate change impact assessment on agriculture, water-resources, ecosystems, etc. It promotes the application of climate data.
During the last century, the evidence of increase of the mean annual temperature at the Earth's surface and? the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is clear. In the past decade, significant progress has been made toward a better understanding of the climate system and toward improved projections of long-term climate change. In these regards, we have been producing some future climate scenarios and projections using a coupled atmosphere-ocean model.
Observed and simulated time series of annual mean surface air temperature anomalies.



Change in annual mean surface air temperature and precipitation rate in the future.
Change in annual mean sea-level pressure and 200 hPa wind in the future. The low-pressure anomaly in high-latitudes, the high-pressure anomaly in mid-latitudes and the strong westerly winds will be dominant each others.
Recently, it has become more important to develop dynamical climate models as a crucial tool to predict the future climate and understand the mechanism of climate variability.

The Climate Research Laboratory constructed a dynamic ensemble system using a global climate model. It has been operating this system for several years to produce climate prediction information. As a future research project, a plan is introduced to develop a coupled ocean-atmosphere forecast systems for the purposes of short-term climate prediction which covers from seasonal to inter-annual period.

The difference between the precipitation in DJF of 1997/98 (El Nino) and DJF of 1988/89 (La Nina), obtained from (a) CMAP precipitation and (b) hindcast data of the global model. Hindcast experiments were performed with persisted SST anomaly as SMIP/HFP type.
The Climate Research Laboratory has produced the information on seasonal outlook by using NIMR dynamic ensemble model several years ago to provide the model to related operational and research centers. In 2005, the NIMR 3-month prediction system has been developed using NIMR AGCM. The results from the NIMR 3-month prediction system have been provided every month since March 2006 to operational division.
The NIMR Ensemble Prediction System performs 10-member ensemble runs based on the NIMR AGCM with lagged initial conditions. As a surface boundary forcing, observed sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly is persisted for forecast periods.
A sample figure shows 3-month forecast produced by the NIMR EPS. The NIMR AGCM produces similar patterns to target month observation for every lead times, resulting in consistence with each prediction, although shorter lead time makes better prediction in general.
High resolution climate information is critical for the assessment of climate change impacts and possible adaptation/mitigation measures. This is especially the case for regions, such as the Korean peninsula, characterized by complex coastlines and topographical features. We developed the dynamic downscaling system based on the regional climate model, with focus on the possible application of the fine scale fields to impacts studies

Our ultimate goal is to investigate the potential change in regional surface climate due to the global warming and to produce higher quality regional surface climate information focus on the Korean Peninsula for comprehensive impact assessment. Toward this purpose, we carried out a series of experiments to assess whether the regional climate model system developed in this study are adequate for providing reasonable fine scale information on various temporal and spatial scales.

RegCM3 one-way double-nested domain system and topography for the mother (60 km grid spacing) and nested (20 km grid spacing) simulations.