FORECAST KOREA
The peninsula on KMA's own map — JMA's 5 km mesoscale model, the GSM to eleven days, ECMWF alongside, and the sea state on three seas, in Korea time.
Korea on KMA's own map
LOADING…Drawn in the Lambert conformal conic the Korea Meteorological Administration draws in — true at 30°N and 60°N, 126°E down the middle, the projection of KMA's 5 km forecast grid and its weather charts — so the peninsula stands the shape a Korean weather map draws it, Jeju to the Tumen, over relief and the real floor of the East Sea, with this hour's MSM laid on top. Click a province or a city for its maps, or a sea for its waves.
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The Japan Meteorological Agency's mesoscale model, whose 5 km domain takes in the whole peninsula — run eight times a day, hourly to a day and a half and to three days on the 00 and 12Z runs. The finest grid over Korea that is published openly. Temperature, rain, wind, pressure, cloud and sunlight.
Eleven days out
JMA's global model on its regional window at about 10 km, hourly for five and a half days and three-hourly to eleven. Where MSM stops this carries the forecast on, on the same frame and in the same colours — so the handover changes the model and nothing else.
The outside benchmark
ECMWF's operational deterministic run, widely held to be the most accurate global model there is, drawn on the same frame in the same colours. Flip it against MSM at the same valid hour and every difference on screen is a real disagreement between forecasts.
Sea State
JMA's coastal wave model at about 5 km over the Yellow Sea, the Korea Strait and the East Sea — significant height, period and direction, three-hourly to three days. The ferry to Jeju and the run to Ulleung-do are what it is read for.
Typhoons
The whole run on the western North Pacific frame. A typhoon that will reach Korea is south of Okinawa three days earlier — off the bottom of the peninsula's map and squarely in the middle of this one.
Ocean swell
The open-ocean sea state to eleven days. Typhoon swell reaches Jeju and the south coast a day before the wind does, and the period field is where you see it coming.
Why these models
Not KMA's, and why
The Korea Meteorological Administration runs its own models — KIM, and the UM-based LDAPS and RDAPS — but publishes their grids only through its API Hub, behind a registered key and a daily quota, not as open files a site may draw and pass on. So this site carries the open models that cover the peninsula whole. If KMA's grids become openly redistributable, they go first.
One frame, one instant
MSM, the GSM and ECMWF are drawn on the same frame in the same colours. Switching model holds the valid time, never the forecast hour, so MSM's 09 KST against ECMWF's 09 KST is the same moment from two forecasts — the only comparison that means anything.
The picture is the data
Every frame is a palettised PNG whose palette is the colour ramp, so the image is a reversible encoding of the forecast: point anywhere on the map and the value comes back out, and every city's number on the map is read out of the picture itself.
Part of a network
Forecast Korea is the Korean member of a family of model sites. Its frames are rendered by Forecast Japan, whose domains reach across the peninsula; Forecast Euro reads ECMWF, Forecast Canada the MSC suite, Forecast Britain the Met Office, and weather.city covers places rather than models.