[Photo] S. Korea nearly completes development of indigenous weather prediction model

The UK’s Unified Model (UM) system is used by countries around the world, including South Korea, for weather forecasts. However, South Korea has developed its own model for numerical weather predictions, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). Currently, the KMA runs a modified version of UM for predicting weather patterns on its supercomputers; before that, it used Japan’s Global Spectral Model (GSM) until switching over to UM in 2010. While the UM is ranked second globally for accuracy, its accuracy for the East Asia region is relatively low. If the new Korean Integrated Model (KIM) system runs as planned, it’s expected to be ranked fifth globally in accuracy while drastically improving the accuracy of weather predictions for South Korea and the East Asia region. (provided by the KMA)