• Atmosphere
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.185-198
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• 2021

In this study, we examined a spatial downscaling method based on Gradient and Inverse Distance Squared (GIDS) weighting to produce high-resolution grid data from a numerical weather prediction model over Korean Peninsula with complex terrain. The GIDS is a simple and effective geostatistical downscaling method using horizontal distance gradients and an elevation. The predicted meteorological variables (e.g., temperature and 3-hr accumulated rainfall amount) from the Limited-area ENsemble prediction System (LENS; horizontal grid spacing of 3 km) are used for the GIDS to produce a higher horizontal resolution (1.5 km) data set. The obtained results were compared to those from the bilinear interpolation. The GIDS effectively produced high-resolution gridded data for temperature with the continuous spatial distribution and high dependence on topography. The results showed a better agreement with the observation by increasing a searching radius from 10 to 30 km. However, the GIDS showed relatively lower performance for the precipitation variable. Although the GIDS has a significant efficiency in producing a higher resolution gridded temperature data, it requires further study to be applied for rainfall events.