A Study on Characteristics of Climate Variability and Changes in Weather Indexes in Busan Since 1904

Holding the longest observation data from April 1904, Busan is one of the essential points to understand the climate variability of the Korean Peninsula without missing data since implementing the modern weather observation of the South Korea. Busan is featured by coastal areas and affected by various climate factors and fluctuations. This study aims to investigate climate variability and changes in climatic variables, extremes, and several weather indexes. The statistically significant change points in daily mean rainfall intensity and temperature were found in 1964 and 1965. Based on the change point detection, 117 years were divided into two periods for daily mean rainfall intensity and temperature, respectively. In the long-term temperature analysis of Busan, the increasing trend of the daily maximum temperature during the period of 1965 similar to 2021 was larger than the daily mean temperature and the daily minimum temperature. Applying Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition, daily maximum temperature is largely affected by the decadal variability compared to the daily mean and minimum temperature. In addition, the trend of daily precipitation intensity from 1964 similar to 2021 shows a value of about 0.50 mm day(-1), suggesting that the rainfall intensity has increased compared to the preceding period. The results in extremes analysis demonstrate that return values of both extreme temperatures and precipitation show higher values in the latter than in the former period, indicating that the intensity of the current extreme phenomenon increases. For Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature (effective humidity), increasing (decreasing) trend is significant in Busan with the second (third)-largest change among four stations.