Record High Temperatures Hit Korea

Temperatures are recording new highs as each day passes, with Uiseong in North Gyeongsang Province reaching 37 degrees Celsius, surpassing the body temperature on Friday, August 4. Daegu marked 36.7 degrees Celsius and Seoul reached its highest coming into this year of 34.7 degrees.

Tropical nights have been continuing for more than a week, and the number of deaths due to heatstroke is increasing.

The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) forecasted, “Day temperatures will reach 35 degrees Celsius and tropical nights will continue until next week when the summer vacation is at its peak. As the rainy season ended later than usual, the North Pacific high atmospheric pressure is expanding belatedly, and this will cause the heat to continue until mid-September.”

Accordingly, the KMA will inform the heat index which measures the degree of discomfort from the heat on its web site (www.kma.go.kr) starting this year to prevent accidents due to the unbearable heat.

The KMA announced on August 4 that the number of tropical nights in Korea for the past five years has increased by more than twice from that of during the early 1900s before urbanization started.

From 1909 to 1920, there were four tropical nights a year, but this increased to 12 coming into the 2001-2005 period. In particular, Seoul had an average of 1.1 tropical nights in the early 1900s, but this figure increased to 6.6 during the past five years, jumping by six folds.

Coming into this summer, Daegu has experienced seven tropical nights, Jeonju eight, Gwangju eight, Mokpo 12, Jeju eight and Seogwipo 11 as of August 3.

The weather agency analyzed that as the urbanization started to speed, the number of tropical nights increased significantly in metropolitan cities, and the climate in Jeju is turning subtropical due to a global warming phenomenon. Meanwhile, this year’s July leap month (the seventh lunar month comes twice, from July 25 to September 21) has come in 38 years, and is catching the interest of whether the “leap month effect”, a phenomenon in which the heat will prolong if the leap month is in the summer season, will apply for this year or not.

gaea@donga.com