Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA)
On 15 December 1998, the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) headquarters moved to a new 10- storey building located about 10 km south-west of central Seoul. Detailed information on the move of the Satellite Division and/or the Remote Sensing Research Laboratory (METRI/KMA) can be obtained at the KMA homepage (http://www.kma.go.kr and/or http://www. metri.re.kr).
There are 5 radar weather stations, 88 weather stations and about 400 automatic weather stations throughout the country. KMA contains the Satellite Office (14 employees), equipped with a new dual-satellite data receiving/analysing system and with the receiving system for GMS-5 and NOAA satellites. Reception of future meteorological satellite data is also being prepared, like FY-2b from China, the Geostationary Operational Meteorological Satellite (GOMS) from the Russian Federation and MTSat from Japan.
For the general public, satellite imaginary is serviced through the KMA home page since 1997. Because of the direct access, the number of hard copy images requested from the public decreased dramatically, from 3,200 to 1,700 and 103 images for 1996, 1997 and 1998, respectively. Currently, infra-red, visible, fog and yellow sand images for the latest 24 hours are available. For in-house users, an Intranet server is being prepared by the MSD. The Intranet server provides more items and for longer time periods (at present data for one month) than the Internet server.
In the case of the numerical weather prediction model, the global data assimilation and prediction system (GDAPS) uses satellite data for data assimilation. Currently, the GDAPS uses the weekly averaged global sea surface temperature (SST) from the National Environment Satellite, Data and Information Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States of America through the Internet. Inclusion of the weekly averaged SST data has significantly improved the assimilated temperatures and wind fields, especially over the southern hemisphere. The GDAPS also uses gridded data, which are useful for the improvement of humidity sounding, especially over the ocean. Although SST data, upper tropospheric water vapour data and data on total precipitable water near the Korean peninsular are generated, they have not been used for GDAPS input because of quality control and other problems.
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