This study aimed to analyze causality of climatic factors that affecting the yield of whole crop barley (WCB) by constructing a network within the natural ecosystem via the structural equation model. The WCB dataset (n=316) consisted of data on the forage information and climatic information. The forage information was collected from numerous experimental reports from New Cultivars of Winter Crops (1993-2012) and included details of fresh and dry matter yield, and the year and location of cultivation. The climatic information included details of the daily mean temperature, precipitation, and sunshine duration from the weather information system of the Korea Meteorological Administration. The variables were growing days, accumulated temperature, precipitation, and sunshine duration in the season for the period of seeding to harvesting. The data was collected over 3 consecutive seasons—autumn, winter, and the following spring. We created a causality network depicting the effect of climatic factors on production by structural equation modeling. The results highlight: (i) the differences in the longitudinal effects between autumn and next spring, (ii) the factors that directly affect WCB production, and (iii) the indirect effects by certain factors, via two or more paths. For instance, the indirect effect of precipitation on WCB production in the following spring season via its effect on temperature was remarkable. Based on absolute values, the importance of WCB production in decreasing order was: the following spring temperature (0.45), autumn temperature (0.35), wintering (-0.16), and following spring precipitation (0.04). Therefore, we conclude that other climatic factors indirectly affect production through the final pathway, temperature and growing days in the next spring, in the climate-production network for WCB including temperature, growing days, precipitation and sunshine duration.

Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) gravimeter satellites observed the Earth gravity field with unprecedented accuracy since 2002. After the termination of GRACE mission, GRACE Follow-on (GFO) satellites successively observe global gravity field, but there is missing period between GRACE and GFO about one year. Many previous studies estimated terrestrial water storage (TWS) changes using hydrological models, vertical displacements from global navigation satellite system observations, altimetry, and satellite laser ranging for a continuity of GRACE and GFO data. Recently, in order to predict TWS changes, various machine learning methods are developed such as artificial neural network and multi-linear regression. Previous studies used hydrological and climate data simultaneously as input data of the learning process. Further, they excluded linear trends in input data and GRACE/GFO data because the trend components obtained from GRACE/GFO data were assumed to be the same for other periods. However, hydrological models include high uncertainties, and observational period of GRACE/GFO is not long enough to estimate reliable TWS trends. In this study, we used convolutional neural networks (CNN) method incorporating only climate data set (temperature, evaporation, and precipitation) to predict TWS variations in the missing period of GRACE/GFO. We also make CNN model learn the linear trend of GRACE/GFO data. In most river basins considered in this study, our CNN model successfully predicts seasonal and long-term variations of TWS change.

We analyzed diurnal variations in the surface air temperature using the high density urban climate observation network of Daegu in summer, 2013. We compared the time elements, which are characterized by the diurnal variation of surface air temperature. The warming and cooling rates in rural areas are faster than in urban areas. It is mainly due to the difference of surface heat capacity. In addition, local wind circulation also affects the discrepancy of thermal spatiotemporal distribution in Daegu. Namely, the valley and mountain breezes affect diurnal variation of horizontal distribution of air temperature. During daytimes, the air(valley breeze) flows up from urban located at lowlands to higher altitudes of rural areas. The temperature of valley breeze rises gradually as it flows from lowland to upland. Hence the difference of air temperature decreases between urban and rural areas. At nighttime, the mountains cool more rapidly than do low-lying areas, so the air(mountain breeze) becomes denser and sinks toward the valleys(lowlands). As the result, the air temperature becomes lower in rural areas than in urban areas.