{"id":98,"date":"2013-06-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yule-tide.generalsemiotics.net\/index.php\/2013\/06\/21\/xpost-91-korean-monsoon-average-onset-dates-2005-2013\/"},"modified":"2013-06-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T00:00:00","slug":"xpost-91-korean-monsoon-average-onset-dates-2005-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/2013\/06\/21\/xpost-91-korean-monsoon-average-onset-dates-2005-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-91: Korean Monsoon Average Onset Dates, 2005-2013"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Question of When Korea’s Monsoon Begins<\/strong> continues, for some reason, to haunt me, following post-89<\/a> and post-90<\/a>.<\/span> I remain puzzled about whether the first Monsoon (Jang-Ma<\/em> [\uc7a5\ub9c8] in Korean) on June 17th of this year was “early” or not.<\/p>\n

To satiate my curiosity, I tried to find, via online news reports, the reported first Jang-Ma<\/em> days in Korea over the past ten years. Caveat: I am not so sure about 2011’s truly-very-early date, which may only have influenced Jeju Island.<\/p>\n

Dates of the Start of Monsoon Seasons, Jang-Ma,<\/em> in Mainland Korea<\/span><\/strong><\/font>
2005<\/a>: June 26th
2006<\/a>: June 21st
2007: ?? — I could not find it in the English press
2008<\/a>: June 17th
2009<\/a>: June 25th
2010<\/a>: June 19th
2011<\/a>: June 10th<\/a> — “the monsoon…arrive[d] earlier than at any time since the KMA began compiling statistics in 1973”
2012<\/a>: June 30th
2013: June 17th<\/p>\n

The average “Monsoon season onset day” in the past decade, if excluding 2011, is June 22nd; if including 2011’s, it’s June 21st. Both are earlier than the historical average of June 25th-29th. That date range is according to this<\/a>, which analyzes the entire period of 1778-2004 for Seoul. \n<\/div>\n

\n
\"Picture\"<\/a> <\/p>\n
Average Rainfall in Seoul, 1778-2004. “Pentad 36” is the five-day period, is June 25th-29th.
From “Variability and Singularity of Seoul, South Korea, Rainy Season (1778\u20132004)” [Link<\/a>]<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
This is a pretty comprehensive academic study, and finds a June 25th-29th average onset day<\/strong>. The government says<\/a> that the Jang-Ma<\/em> season for central Korea started, on average, June 24th\/25th<\/strong> in the 1981-2010 period.<\/p>\n

1778-2004 Average: June 25th-29th<\/span>
1981-2010 Average: June 24th-25th<\/span>
2005-2013 Average: June 21st-22nd<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>My final conclusion: The June 17th 2013 Monsoon was “early”, but not very early.<\/strong> More interestingly, the recent average start day of the Jang-Ma <\/em>season has been getting earlier, if my attempt to analyze the data is correct. This does not point to a general “warming trend”, because, also ancedotally, I can say that winter was very, very long this year (see post-34<\/a> and post-63<\/a>). Koreans themselves have been saying spring starts later and later each year recently.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n

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In the course of my reading, I saw that Korea’s rainfall is higher today than it was in the 1800s:\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Picture\"<\/a> <\/p>\n
Rainfall Statistics in Korea, in millimeters.
Chosun: 1778-1907 \/ Modern: 1908-2004.
Table 1 from “Variability and Singularity of Seoul, South Korea, Rainy Season (1778\u20132004)” [Link<\/a>]<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
That’s 10% more rain per year in the past century than earlier. Why? I have no idea. \n<\/div>\n
\nThis 85-mm increase in summer rainfall could be interpreted as more days of “regular” (non-torrential) rain, or as more days of true Monsoon<\/em>, of torrential rain. The following<\/a> may suggest the latter:<\/span>\n<\/div>\n

Meteorologists believe Korea is witnessing a rainy season throughout the summer as the country’s climate turns subtropical, with global warming raising the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. The “August rains” often cause a substantial amount of damage, since torrential downpours are focused on a small area over a short period of time. Between 1954 and 1963, only an average of 1.6 days a year saw 80 mm of rainfall a day. But that increased to 2.3 days between 1994 and 2003<\/strong>. The torrential downpour phenomenon is becoming a feature of our weather. Global warming increases the amount of energy in the atmosphere, leading to more frequent extreme weather conditions, such as typhoons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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I’d like to know more on the topic, but my mind is exhausted from looking to this “First Jang-Ma<\/em> Day Question” I’ve been on, so I’m throwing in the towel. If someone else who may reads this knows or can guess, leave a comment.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Question of When Korea’s Monsoon Begins continues, for some reason, to haunt me, following post-89 and post-90. I remain puzzled about whether the first Monsoon (Jang-Ma [\uc7a5\ub9c8] in Korean) on June 17th of this year was “early” or not. To satiate my curiosity, I tried to find, via online news reports, the reported first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}