South Korea’s state weather agency said Thursday that its short-range weather forecast will start providing an overview of potential weather conditions up to five days ahead, instead of the previous four days.
The update will allow viewers to see weather predictions up to Friday when they check the system on Monday, the Korea Meteorological Administration explained.
However, due to current technological limits, forecast details for the fifth day, such as precipitation probability, will be described in words rather than in numbers and data. For example, if below 2 millimeters of rain per hour is expected on that day then the system will say “light rain.”
The forecast will be updated every three hours and can be checked through the KMA's mobile app.
Businesses will be allowed to adopt and use the agency’s new short-range weather forecast program immediately through an application programming interface, which is a connection that enables two applications or programs to communicate with each other. They can connect their software to the KMA's own data portal round-the-clock.
The KMA said that in order to improve its qualitative analysis of the weather, especially on rain, snow and wind, it has analyzed weather forecast data from the past 30 years. The agency then built a new standard for analysis based on the data, surveys and opinions of weather forecasters and outside experts, it explained.
“With the short-range weather forecast extending to five days and being updated every three hours, I believe that it will improve the convenience of everyday lives as well as help authorities handling disaster prevention to come up with preemptive measures,” Chang Dong-eon, administrator of the Korea Meteorological Administration said.
