Mean Sea-Level Pressure Patterns during Springtime Strong Winds in Gangneung: Consistency with Principal Component Modes over the Korean Peninsula

Springtime strong winds on the east side of the Taebaek Mountains in Korea constitute a critical meteorological hazard that not only causes direct damage but also triggers serious secondary disasters such as rapid spread of wildfires, threats to aviation safety, and dispersion of atmospheric pollutants. To examine this phenomenon, principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to spring daily mean sea-level pressure (MSLP) fields (2016-2025). Wind-speed cases were classified using the ASOS data for Gangneung. PC1-PC3 explained 86.3% of the total variance (PC1 alone explained 62.1% of the total variance), capturing most of the MSLP variability. For strong-wind cases, the spatial correlation between the original and reconstructed MSLP fields increased from about 0.7 with PC1 to 0.87 with PC1-PC3. These results demonstrated high consistency: springtime strong winds in Gangneung are driven by a distinct south-high and north-low MSLP pattern that closely matches the overarching principal modes over the Korean Peninsula. Consequently, the effective utilization of these springtime synoptic MSLP patterns is key to improving the prediction of strong wind occurrences in Gangneung, thereby providing essential insights for proactive disaster mitigation.