Public distrust in state-run weather agency deepens

By Jun Ji-hye

Kim Yoon-jae, a Seoul resident and freelance lecturer on money management topics, downloaded a Norwegian weather forecast app earlier this month, after he heard from his friends that the information offered by the Scandinavian country was more accurate than that provided by the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA).

Since then, the 34-year-old has frequently checked the Yr app, the joint online weather service from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corp., for weather forecasts for his city as well as for other regions he is planning to visit.

“I often go camping with my wife on weekends. Whenever we plan to go camping, we check the Yr app in advance, because I cannot trust the weather reports issued by the KMA,” Kim said.

An increasing number of people here, like Kim, are seeking to obtain weather information from the overseas websites or mobile applications run by the weather agencies or broadcasting centers in Finland, the United Kingdom and Norway, among others, amid deepening public distrust of the state-run weather agency.

The distrust has arisen as the KMA's weather reports have appeared to be consistently inaccurate.

For example, in May, the KMA forecast the country would receive similar precipitation as last year and suffer a record heat wave between the end of July and the beginning of August.

Contrary to the KMA's prediction, the nation was hit by massive downpours that caused deadly floods, landslides and casualties during that period.

The forecast for the rainfall amount appeared to be inaccurate as well, with some regions, in which heavy rain warnings were issued, experiencing just light drizzle.

This year's rainy season began June 24 and continued for 54 days in the nation's central region, marking the longest monsoon season since 2013 when it lasted for 49 days.

The incorrect weather predictions led the KMA to be ridiculed by many online commentators who asked why the agency kept issuing inaccurate forecasts despite the fact that tens of billions of won have been spent on improving its prediction system.

The agency implemented the Korean Integrated Model (KIM) weather forecasting system in April, after years of development and at a cost of about 80 billion won ($67 million).

At the time, the agency stressed that the KIM, which reflects Korea's topographic and weather characteristics, would increase the precision of weather forecasts.

The agency also possesses two supercomputers that cost 17 billion won and 52 billion won, respectively.

Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun raised the need for the state-run weather agency to improve its shortcomings, Aug. 9, during a visit to Gwangju and South Jeolla Province, which had been hit particularly hard by the torrential rain.

“The KMA, together with the Ministry of Environment, will need to consider ways of raising the accuracy level of the country's weather forecasting system,” Chung said.

Regarding the criticism, a KMA official said it has become more difficult to forecast the weather precisely due to global climate change, which is making weather systems increasingly unpredictable.

“The speed of technology development has not been able to catch up with the speed of climate change,” a KMA official said. “There are too many variables in nature, and modern science cannot figure them all out. Errors can occur because of those variables.”

Some weather and environment experts agreed with the KMA.

Kim Seung-bae, the director of the Korea Meteorological Industry Association, explained that this year's unusually long rainy season came as abnormally high temperatures continued at the North Pole.

“Nobody could precisely forecast this kind of abnormality,” Kim said, noting that the limitations of atmospheric science study so far should be recognized.

Kim Hae-dong, a global environment professor at Keimyung University, also wrote in a column that the various types of climate change cannot be fully understood with today's climatological knowledge.

“Weather agencies in Japan and China have faced similar situations,” he wrote.

However, Oh Jae-ho, a professor of the department of environmental atmospheric sciences at Pukyong National University, said, “The most important thing is that consumers are not happy with the weather information offered by the KMA. Thus, the agency will need to come up with measures to resolve that dissatisfaction, rather than talking about science.”