Dr. Boksoon Myoung from APEC Climate Center (APCC) wrote the research paper entitled

"Recent Trend of Cold Winters Followed by Hot Summers in South Korea due to the Combined Effects of the Warm Western Tropical Pacific and North Atlantic in Spring". Her paper, recently published online in Environmental Research Letters, recently attracted the public attention and media.

* Paper link : https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac1134

Her paper finds a significant negative correlation between the December-February mean surface temperature and the following June-August mean surface temperature in South Korea for the period 1991-2017. This indicates that colder winters tend to precede hotter summers with extreme seasonality, while mild winters generally precede mild summers.

This winter-to-summer association can be attributed to persistent atmospheric circulation anomalies on the Eurasian continent during the preceding winter and spring characterized by cyclonic circulations in Europe and East Asia and anti-cyclonic circulation in the Arctic region.

These findings are expected to contribute not only to enhance the ability to predict summer temperatures and heat waves in Korea, but also to establish effective heat wave measures in the future. In addition, her study scientifically identified that this extreme climate phenomenon has become serious since 1991 due to climate change. These research results enable us to effectively cope with extreme climate by linking the prediction of heat waves with the occurrence of cold waves in the future.