A number of heavy rainfall events on the Korean Peninsula are indirectly influenced by tropical cyclones (TCs) when they are located in southeastern China. In this study, a heavy rainfall case in the middle Korean region is selected to examine the influence of typhoon simulation performance on predictability of remote rainfall over Korea as well as direct rainfall over Taiwan. Four different numerical experiments are conducted using Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, toggling on and off two different improvements on typhoon in the model initial condition (IC), which are TC bogussing initialization and dropwindsonde observation data assimilation (DA). The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory TC initialization algorithm is implemented to generate the bogused vortex instead of the initial typhoon, while the airborne observation obtained from dropwindsonde is applied by WRF Three-dimensional variational data assimilation. Results show that use of both TC initialization and DA improves predictability of TC track as well as rainfall over Korea and Taiwan. Without any of IC improvement usage, the intensity of TC is underestimated during the simulation. Using TC initialization alone improves simulation of direct rainfall but not of indirect rainfall, while using DA alone has a negative impact on the TC track forecast. This study confirms that the well-suited TC simulation over southeastern China improves remote rainfall predictability over Korea as well as TC direct rainfall over Taiwan.

Data for model analysis derived from the finite volume (fv) GCM (Goddard Earth Observing System Ver. 4, GEOS-4) and the Land Data Assimilation System (LDAS) have been utilized in a mesoscale model. These data are tested to provide initial conditions and lateral boundary forcings to the Purdue Mesoscale Model (PMM) for a case study of the Midwestern flood that took place from 21-23 May 1998. The simulated results with fvGCM and LDAS soil moisture and temperature data are compared with that of ECMWF reanalysis. The initial conditions of the land surface provided by fvGCM/LDAS show significant differences in both soil moisture and ground temperature when compared to ECMWF control run, which results in a much different atmospheric state in the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL). The simulation result shows that significant changes to the forecasted weather system occur due to the surface initial conditions, especially for the precipitation and temperature over the land. In comparing precipitation, moisture budgets, and surface energy, not only do the intensity and the location of precipitation over the Midwestern U.S. coincide better when running fvGCM/LDAS, but also the temperature forecast agrees better when compared to ECMWF reanalysis data. However, the precipitation over the Rocky Mountains is too large due to the cumulus parameterization scheme used in the PMM. The RMS errors and biases of fvGCM/LDAS are smaller than the control run and show statistical significance supporting the conclusion that the use of LDAS improves the precipitation and temperature forecast in the case of the Midwestern flood. The same method can be applied to Korea and simulations will be carried out as more LDAS data becomes available.