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'Torture of hope’ by Korea Meteorological Administration

'Torture of hope’ by Korea Meteorological Administration

Posted August. 24, 2016 07:29,   

Updated August. 24, 2016 07:34

한국어

Tuesday marked Cheoseo, one of the 24 seasonal divisions that signals the start of fall, but its daytime high hit 33 degrees Celsius. The Korea Meteorological Administration predicted that scorching weather would cool off a bit after Friday, but Koreans can hardly trust its forecast as the weather agency has continued issuing inaccurate forecasts throughout this summer. The agency said hot temperatures would peak on Aug. 11–14, but the mercury soared even further over the period. Since last Monday, it has been delaying the forecast of timing that sweltering heat would start to ease. It once withdrew the forecast just three hours and 10 minutes later after its forecast of monsoon rain.

Among various natural disasters on earth, hot weather causes the largest number of fatalities as 71,310 people died in Europe alone in 2003 and 55,736 people lost lives in Russia in 2010. Due to unprecedentedly hot weather and prolonged drought, Korea has also incurred mounting damage including mass loss at livestock farms and fish farms, while fruits and crops including soybeans, red pepper, peanuts, and ginger in farm fields are drying up. Only when the country gets sufficient rain, heat wave will ease and crops in farm fields will regain vitality.

 

The state-run weather agency is making excuses by saying that it is difficult to forecast weather because atmospheric pressure patterns of this year have been so unusual that the country has never experienced such a pattern in more than 30 years, while there have been countless variables including the North Pacific high atmospheric pressure, and inflow of hot air from China. However, its flurry of inaccurate forecasts have inflicted "torture of hope" to people who are completely exhausted due to hot weather. People had expectations on the agency, as the Super computer No. 4 worth 53.2 billion won (47.6 million U.S. dollars) and numerical weather prediction models, whose annual subscription fee is 150 million won (134,000 dollars), began to provide service this year. However, considering that all these high-tech services have proven to have limited effect, the problem seems to lie in people rather than in machines.

As a flurry of corruptions in procurement and personnel affairs erupted in 2014, the agency attempted to reform itself even by forming an anti-corruption taskforce, saying, “There is a group of officials connected through certain alumni organizations.” However, corruptions in supply contracts continued even after reform efforts, and the agency has yet to improve its tarnished image as "corrupt KMA.” However exquisite the machines are, the machines will be useless if weathermen who read and analyze data lack capacity. Even when the weather agency continues to make inaccurate predictions, smartphone applications on weather have often presented accurate forecasts. If its complacency is to be addressed, the weather service market must be opened more widely for competition with the private sector.