This study evaluates the impact of grid resolution (1 km vs. 500 m) on temperature reproducibility and future extreme climate projections over South Korea under the shared socio-economic pathway (SSP) scenarios. First, a comprehensive performance evaluation for the historical observational period (2000 2019) revealed that the 500 m resolution improves the representation of local temperature variability compared to the 1 km dataset. By achieving higher topographic fidelity and accurately reflecting actual station altitudes, the 500 m grid effectively reduced the systematic cold bias (approximately -0.07 to -0.09°C) found in the 1 km data to near zero (±0.01°C), particularly in complex terrains. Future projections for the late 21st century (2071 2100) indicate a sharp contrast in extreme climate indices depending on emission forcing; however, the “Resolution Effect” defined as the systematic difference between 500 m and 1 km remained remarkably consistent regardless of the warming intensity of the scenarios. The 500 m resolution consistently adjusted the annual minimum temperature (TNn) upward (+0.20 to 0.22°C) and the annual maximum temperature (TXx) downward (over -1.0°C), successfully mitigating the overestimation of extreme values often observed in coarser grids. Furthermore, the inter-model spread is slightly smaller in the 500 m simulations. These findings demonstrate that ultra-high-resolution simulations are essential for capturing fine-scale topographic feedbacks and providing more reliable, physically consistent climate information necessary for establishing robust regional adaptation and disaster management strategies.
Lee et al. (Thu,) studied this question.