A web-based climate change information service for impact assessment in agriculture

There has been little attempt to show the spatial variation of plant responses to climate change across a geographical region at the landscape scale due to the insufficient spatial resolution of climate change scenario. We obtained a 27 km - resolution, 2011 - 2100 temperature projection data set covering Korean peninsula under the auspices of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change - Special Report on Emission Scenarios A1B from the National Institute of Meteorological Research. The data set was converted to 9 sets of 30 m gridded data representing each 10-years period from 2011 to 2100 by using proven geospatial techniques in topo-climatology including nocturnal effects of cold air drainage and the so-called ‘Thermal belt' on site-specific temperature in complex terrain. Monthly averages for daily minimum and maximum temperatures produced for each decade were used to calculate climatic indices like diurnal temperature range, annual growing degree days, frost-free period and so on. Phenology models for a local peach cultivar were driven by these high-definition digital climate data to generate response surfaces for budburst date, flowering date, dormancy release date, and freeze risk expected for each decade under the projected climate. Most map products were registered on a web-based information system operated by the Korea Meteorological Administration (www.climate.go.kr) for public service. Users can select climate variable, time period, and area of interest through a web-GIS interface. The selected data can be viewed as map images or downloaded in various data format (ASCII, binary, ESRI Grid).