Research Article
Projecting Future Climate Change Scenarios
Using Three Bias-Correction Methods
Donghyuk Kum,
1
Kyoung Jae Lim,
1
Chun Hwa Jang,
1
Jichul Ryu,
2
Jae E. Yang,
3
Seong Joon Kim,
4
Dong Soo Kong,
5
and Younghun Jung
1
1
Department of Regional Infrastructure Engineering, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Gangwon 200-701, Republic of Korea
2
National Institute of Environmental Research, Incheon 404-708, Republic of Korea
3
Department of Biological Environment, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Gangwon 200-701, Republic of Korea
4
Department of Civil & Environmental System Engineering, Konkuk University, Seoul 143-701, Republic of Korea
5
Department of Life Science, Kyonggi University, Suwon 443-760, Republic of Korea
Correspondence should be addressed to Younghun Jung; jung.younghun@gmail.com
Received 22 August 2014; Revised 8 November 2014; Accepted 25 November 2014; Published 14 December 2014
Academic Editor: Klaus Dethlof
Copyright © 2014 Donghyuk Kum et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
We performed bias correction in future climate change scenarios to provide better accuracy of models through adaptation to future
climate change. he proposed combination of the change factor (CF) and quantile mapping (QM) methods combines the individual
advantages of both methods for adjusting the bias in global circulation models (GCMs) and regional circulation models (RCMs). We
selected a study site in Songwol-dong, Seoul, Republic of Korea, to test and assess our proposed method. Our results show that the
combined CF + QM method delivers better performance in terms of correcting the bias in GCMs/RCMs than when both methods
are applied individually. In particular, our proposed method considerably improved the bias-corrected precipitation by capturing
both the high peaks and amounts of precipitation as compared to that from the CF-only and QM-only methods. hus, our proposed
method can provide high-accuracy bias-corrected precipitation data, which could prove to be highly useful in interdisciplinary
studies across the world.
1. Introduction
With the increase in industrialization around the world,
the quality of human life has improved in various aspects
through advancement in scientiic technology, profession-
alism in occupations, level of consumption, and so forth.
However, these improvements have caused an excessive use
of fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, natural gas, etc.) [1] and an
increase in global temperatures triggered by the increase in
greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, etc.) in
the troposphere [2].
In general, human activity in agriculture, industry, and
commerce inluences global ecosystems through factors such
as aerosol efects, land use change, and deforestation. his
can lead to negative impacts such as increase in air tem-
perature and changes in precipitation patterns [3], which
mainly inluence climate change globally [4]. According to
the 4th Assessment Report (AR4), Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) [5], the number of days with
precipitation and lood occurrence frequencies has steadily
and gradually increased due to unusual climate changes
indicating that natural disasters will occur more frequently
and intensely in the future than before [5].
Republic of Korea has mountainous terrain across
approximately 70% of its area and more than 70% of the coun-
try’s precipitation occurs during the summer period (July
to September) [6]. hus, signiicant amount of water from
rainfall is usually discharged into streams as direct runof
and the topographical characteristics of the land aid this
discharge. Republic of Korea has sufered from both frequent
loods aided by the direct runof in the summer period and
droughts caused by water scarcity due to unbalanced rainfall
during the crop growing seasons. hese repetitive natural
disasters have caused great economic losses and uncertainties
in sustainable water resources management plans across the
country every year [7].
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Advances in Meteorology
Volume 2014, Article ID 704151, 12 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/704151