In this study, extreme wind speeds in the Western North Pacific (WNP) were estimated using reanalysis wind fields synthesized with an empirical typhoon vortex model. Reanalysis wind data used is the Fifth-generation European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis (ERA5) data, which was deemed to be the most suitable for extreme value analysis in this study. The empirical typhoon vortex model used has the advantage of being able to realistically reproduce the asymmetric winds of a typhoon by using the gale/storm-forced wind radii information in the 4 quadrants of a typhoon. Using a total of 39 years of the synthesized reanalysis wind fields in the WNP, extreme value analysis is applied to the General Pareto Distribution (GPD) model based on the Peak-Over-Threshold (POT) method, which can be used effectively in case of insufficient data. The results showed that the extreme analysis using the synthesized wind data significantly improved the tendency to underestimate the extreme wind speeds compared to using only reanalysis wind data. Considering the difficulty of obtaining long-term observational wind data at sea, the result of the synthesized wind field and extreme value analysis developed in this study can be used as basic data for the design of offshore structures.
To understand the temporal variation of prokaryotic communities in a temperate coastal area, prokaryotic abundance, activity, and community composition were investigated every week for over a year at a coastal monitoring station of Yeong-do, Busan. The prokaryotic abundances fluctuated about 10 times, ranging from 2.0 to 20.1 × 105 cells mL-1 and tended to be high in spring when phytoplankton bloom occurred. The prokaryotic thymidine incorporation rates (TTI) varied in a low range between 0.2 and 11.5 pmol L-1 h-1 in winter. However, in summer, TTI were increased up to a range of 8.3 to 17.4 pmol L-1 h-1, showing an increasing pattern in summer. During the study period, Alphaproteobacteria was the most dominant class for most of the year, followed by Flavobacteria. While the seasonal variation of prokaryotic composition was not apparent at the class level, many prokaryotic species showed a distinct temporal or seasonal variation for the year. In the coastal site, prokaryotic biomass and activity did not show significant correlations with temperature and chlorophyll-a, which are well known to regulate prokaryotic growth in marine environments, suggesting that the study area may be affected by diverse sources of organic matter for their growth.
Studies on marine zooplankton diversity and ecology are important for understanding marine ecosystem, as well as environmental conservation and fisheries management. DNA metabarcoding is known as a useful tool to reveal and understand diversity among animals, but a comparative evaluation with classical microscopy is still required in order to properly use it for marine zooplankton research. This study compared crustacean mesozooplankton taxa revealed by morphological analysis and metabarcoding of the cytochrome oxidase I (COI). A total of 17 crustacean species were identified by morphological analysis, and 18 species by metabarcoding. Copepods made up the highest proportion of taxa, accounting for more than 50% of the total number of species delineated by both methods. Cladocerans were not found by morphological analysis, whereas amphipods and mysids were not detected by metabarcoding. Unlike morphological analysis, metabarcoding was able to identify decapods down to the species level. There were some discrepancies in copepod species, which could be due to a lack of genetic database, or biases during DNA extraction, amplification, pooling and bioinformatics. Morphological analysis will be useful for ecological studies as it can classify and quantify the life history stages of marine zooplankton that metabarcoding cannot detect. Metabarcoding can be a powerful tool for determining marine zooplankton diversity, if its methods or database are further supplemented.
