Scientific community has been elaborating to better understand the observed climate and its variations, and to improve the capability for predicting future climate. Many modeling groups participating in the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP) have been working towards multi-model ensemble approach that have become a standard technique for projecting future climate and for assessing associated uncertainties to deal with intrinsic shortcomings of climate models. Within this context, the National Institute of Meteorological Sciences/Korea Meteorological Administration (NIMS/KMA) has developed the KMA Advanced Community Earth-system model (K-ACE) under KMA-Met Office collaboration for climate research. This paper provides general descriptions of the first generation K-ACE model including the coupling strategy, as well as preliminary evaluations of the model performance in mean climate fields. The first generation K-ACE model appears to capture the mean climatology and the inter-annual variability of the observed climate. Horizontal distributions and the variability of the surface and pressure-level variables agree well with observations with correlation coefficients of 0.88-0.99 and 0.69-0.99, respectively. Measured in terms of performance index between the observed and simulated fields, the K-ACE performance is comparable with those of 29 CMIP5 models. This study also identifies key weaknesses of the K-ACE in the present-day climate. Improving these deficiencies will be a topic of future studies. The NIMS/KMA will employ the K-ACE model to contribute to the CMIP6 experiment.

Estimating future sea level rise (SLR) and sea surface temperature (SST) is essential to implement mitigation and adaptation options within a sustainable development framework. This study estimates regional SLR and SST changes around the Korean peninsula. Two Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP1-2.6 and SSP5-8.5) scenarios and nine Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) model simulations are used to estimate the changes in SLR and SST. At the end of the 21st century, global SLR is expected to be 0.28 m (0.17–0.38 m) and 0.65 m (0.52–0.78 m) for SSP 1–2.6 and SSP5-8.5, respectively. Regional change around the Korean peninsula (0.25 m (0.15–0.35 m; SSP1-2.6) and 0.63 m (0.50–0.76 m; SSP5-8.5)) is similar with global SLR. The discrepancy between global and regional changes is distinct in SST warming rather than SLR. For SSP5-8.5, SST around the Korean peninsula projects is to rise from 0.49 °C to 0.59 °C per decade, which is larger than the global SST trend (0.39 °C per decade). Considering this, the difference of regional SST change is related to the local ocean current change, such as the Kuroshio Current. Additionally, ocean thermal expansion and glacier melting are major contributors to SLR, and the contribution rates of glacier melting increase in higher emission scenarios.

This study assesses the performance of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) models for simulating summer heatwaves in Korea during a historical simulation period (1979-2014) using four diagnostic indices that represent the teleconnection mechanism of summer heatwaves in Korea. Four skill metrics are used for the model evaluation, namely, relative error (RE), interannual variability skill-score (IVS), correlation coefficient (CC), and total ranking (TR) based on daily maximum temperature (TMAX) in Korea and the four diagnostic indices. The results show that the REs of CMIP5 models do not differ significantly from those of the CMIP6 models while the IVSs in the CMIP6 models are significantly improved compared with the CMIP5 models. Observations show that the heatwave circulation index (HWCI) contributes more to the interannual variability in TMAX in Korea than that of the Indian Monsoon Rainfall Index (IMRI), indicating that the teleconnection from the northwestern Pacific is more important than that from northwestern India. Interestingly, the CMIP6 models simulate this property better than the CMIP5 ensemble. The higher TR of CMIP6 models than CMIP5 supports that CMIP6 models are better overall in simulating heatwaves in Korea and the associated diagnostic indices. Developed by various modeling groups around the world under the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP)

The National Institute of Meteorological Sciences-Korea Meteorological Administration (NIMS-KMA) has participated in the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP) and provided long-term simulations using the coupled climate model. The NIMS-KMA produces new future projections using the ensemble mean of KMA Advanced Community Earth system model (K-ACE) and UK Earth System Model version1 (UKESM1) simulations to provide scientific information of future climate changes. In this study, we analyze four experiments those conducted following the new shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) based scenarios to examine projected climate change in the twenty-first century. Present day (PD) simulations show high performance skill in both climate mean and variability, which provide a reliability of the climate models and reduces the uncertainty in response to future forcing. In future projections, global temperature increases from 1.92 °C to 5.20 °C relative to the PD level (1995–2014). Global mean precipitation increases from 5.1% to 10.1% and sea ice extent decreases from 19% to 62% in the Arctic and from 18% to 54% in the Antarctic. In addition, climate changes are accelerating toward the late twenty-first century. Our CMIP6 simulations are released to the public through the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) international data sharing portal and are used to support the establishment of the national adaptation plan for climate change in South Korea.

Understanding the response of the Earth system to CO2 removal (CDR) is crucial because the possibility of irreversibility exists. Therefore, the Carbon Dioxide Removal Model Inter-comparison Project (CDRMIP) for the protocol experiment in the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) has been developed. Our analysis focuses on the regional response in the hydrological cycle, especially in East Asia (EA). The peak temperature changes in EA (5.9 K) and the Korean peninsula (KO) (6.1 K) are larger than the global mean surface air temperature (GSAT) response. The precipitation changes are approximately 9.4% (EA) and 23.2% (KO) at the phase change time (130–150 years); however, the largest increase is approximately 16.6% (EA) and 36.5% (KO) in the ramp-down period (150–160 years). In addition, the differences are below 5 mm/day and 1 day for the precipitation intensity indices (Rx1day and Rx5day) and frequency indices (R95 and R99), respectively. Furthermore, the monsoon rainband of the ramp-down period moves northward as the earlier onset with high confidence compared to the ramp-up period; however, it does not move north to the KO region. The results suggest that reducing CO2 moves the rainband southward. However, a detailed interpretation in terms of the mechanism needs to be carried out in further research.