Meteorologists predict top average temperature in 2007
South Korea is expected to see its warmest average temperature yet in 2007, as well as witness unusual weather patterns, such as increased yellow dust in the atmosphere. Lee Man-ki, the administrator of the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA), said on February 8, "The average temperature of the nation is forecasted to go up more than 0.5 degrees Celsius this year from the 12.4-degree average of the previous year. We cannot exclude the possibility that temperatures will be higher than those in 1998, when the average temperature was the highest recorded." Meanwhile, meteorologists in Great Britain predicted in January that the world would witness the warmest climate ever in 2007, with the worldwide average temperature rising 0.54 degrees over that of the previous year. The accelerating global warming may cause more serious unusual weather, said Lee, adding that the deserts of Mongolia and northern China, which are the main source of the yellow dust that invades Korea each spring, are drier than in past years, so there will likely be more dust particles in the air this spring. The number of days when the yellow dust arrived in the spring in Seoul has been rapidly increasing, with an average of 12.8 days per year registered so far this decade, from the 3.9-day average seen yearly during the 1980s.Gwon Won-tae, an official of the KMA, said, "The temperature in 15 areas nationwide was an average 14.1 degrees Celsius for the past ten years, a 0.6 increase from the average between 1971 to 2000. Seven years during the last ten years were included in the top ten warmest years ever." Referring to the fact that temperatures are already higher than average in 2007, Gwon said that the summer will not be extremely hot, however, as a rise in average temperatures creates heavier summer rains, which in turn cool off the air. Days that had more than 80 millimeters of rain in a year numbered an average 36.7 per year between 1996 and 2005, 1.7 times greater than the average of 23.5 days yearly recorded in the period between 1954 and 1963, he said. "The number of typhoons doesn’t show an upward trend, but their power has been getting stronger. Typhoons which caused damages of over 4 trillion won (US$4.4 billion), such as Rusa and Maemi, happened in the past five years," said the KMA. The KMA forecast that the temperature will have risen by 4 degrees Celsius and precipitation will have increased by 17 percent on the Korean peninsula by the late 21st century, based on a report recently released by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). To reduce damage caused by climate change, the nation has been striving to take measures such as putting a special heatwave forecast system into operation by July and establishing a national typhoon satelite observation center by next year, according to Lee. Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]
