KMA's Precipitation Accuracy This Summer Ranks Lowest in Past Decade

[Anchor]

Many of you probably felt frustrated this summer, thinking that rain did not fall when it was forecast to, and poured when it was not. It turns out that feeling was not just your imagination. According to internal data obtained by our reporting team, the accuracy of the Korea Meteorological Administration's precipitation forecasts hit its lowest point this year over the past ten years.

Reporter Jeong Gu-hui has this exclusive report.

[Reporter]

On July 23, citizens held umbrellas in their hands following a forecast that it would rain in Seoul, but the timing of the rain missed the mark.

[Noh Ji-su (July 23): It keeps changing every hour, so I honestly do not believe tomorrow's forecast anymore and just check the current weather right away.]

The next day, July 24, rain was also forecast continuously from early morning until 5:00 PM, but not a single drop of rain actually fell across all of Seoul.

According to internal KMA data obtained by SBS, the accuracy of the weather agency's forecasts from June to August this summer stood at 84%.

That 84% figure is calculated like this:

It covers cases where clear weather was forecast and it was actually clear or it rained, and cases where rain was forecast and it rained or the weather was clear.

The forecast accuracy reflecting the scores of all four of these scenarios comes out to 84%.

However, citizens experienced it somewhat differently.

Days when clear weather was forecast and it was actually clear are excluded because people pay less attention to the weather on those days. Instead, the precipitation hit rate is calculated by looking only at days when rain was forecast or when rain actually fell without any prior forecast. This figure turned out to be 0.32 this summer.

This means the forecasts were correct only about 3 out of 10 times.

While a precipitation hit rate of around 0.5 to 0.6 is considered the limit of modern science, this summer's hit rate recorded the lowest among the summer seasons of the past 10 years, showing an unusually high number of incorrect forecasts.

[Rep. Kim Wi-sang / People Power Party (National Assembly Environment and Labor Committee): Although the Korean numerical weather prediction model has been improved six times, the latest version currently in operation has recorded lower performance than the initial version from six years ago. Explanations that prediction has simply become more difficult seem quite insufficient.]

The KMA explained that, in the case of last July, the forecast accuracy counting only days when rain actually fell ranked second highest among the past 10 years.

The agency also stated that it will expand observation networks, including follow-up weather satellites, and introduce new prediction models to improve forecast accuracy in order to do its utmost in disaster prevention.

(Video Reported by Shin Dong-hwan and Kim Se-kyung | Video Edited by Jeong Yong-hwa | Design by Hwang Se-yeon)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.