Application of a Statistical Interpolation Method to Correct Extreme Values in High-Resolution Gridded Climate Variables

Abstract

A long-term gridded historical data at 3 km spatial resolution has been generated for practical regional applications such as hydrologic modelling. However, overly high or low values have been found at some grid points where complex topography or sparse observational network exist. In this study, the Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) method was applied to properly smooth the overly predicted values of Improved GIS-based Regression Model (IGISRM), called the IDW-IGISRM grid data, at the same resolution for daily precipitation, maximum temperature and minimum temperature from 2001 to 2010 over South Korea. We tested various effective distances in the IDW method to detect an optimal distance that provides the highest performance. IDW-IGISRM was compared with IGISRM to evaluate the effectiveness of IDW-IGISRM with regard to spatial patterns, and quantitative performance metrics over 243 AWS observational points and four selected stations showing the largest biases. Regarding the spatial pattern, IDW-IGISRM reduced irrational overly predicted values, i. e. producing smoother spatial maps that IGISRM for all variables. In addition, all quantitative performance metrics were improved by IDW-IGISRM; correlation coefficient (CC), Index Of Agreement (IOA) increase up to 11.2% and 2.0%, respectively. Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) were also reduced up to 5.4% and 15.2% respectively. At the selected four stations, this study demonstrated that the improvement was more considerable. These results indicate that IDW-IGISRM can improve the predictive performance of IGISRM, consequently providing more reliable high-resolution gridded data for assessment, adaptation, and vulnerability studies of climate change impacts.