{
  "abstract": "Climate-impact assessments increasingly use high-resolution climate forcing, often assuming that finer spatial detail improves impact projections. Yet this assumption has rarely been tested systematically across impact sectors, regions, and forcing variables. Here we use coordinated simulations from 16 impact models participating in the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project to evaluate how increasing forcing resolution from 60 km to 10 km, 3 km, and 1 km affects both climate-input accuracy and impact-model performance. We find that most gains occur when moving from 60 km to 10 km resolution. Further refinement to 3 km and 1 km yields smaller and less consistent benefits, and in some cases degrades performance. Improvements are strongest for temperature-sensitive models and in topographically complex regions, where finer forcing better captures spatial gradients. By contrast, precipitation-driven models and low-relief regions show weaker and less systematic gains. These results challenge the expectation that ever-finer climate forcing necessarily improves impact modelling. Instead, the value of resolution depends on the forcing variable, sector, region, and process representation of the impact model. Benchmarking resolution choices against impact-model performance, rather than climate-input accuracy alone, is therefore essential for designing efficient and decision-relevant climate-impact assessments.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "University of Zurich",
    "Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL",
    "Member of the Leibniz Association",
    "Kinneret Limnological Institute, Israel Oceanographic & Limnological Research",
    "International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)",
    "Institute of Earth Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem",
    "Geophysics and Oceanography (AGO), SPHERES Research Unit, University of Liège",
    "Zhejiang University",
    "Institute for Agriculture and Forestry Systems in the Mediterranean, National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISAFOM)",
    "Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC)",
    "Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)",
    "University of Freiburg",
    "Czech University of Life Sciences",
    "University of Nottingham",
    "The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE)",
    "Surface Waters—Research and Management, Eawag: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology",
    "Institute for Neuroscience, Department of Health Sciences and Technology",
    "ETH Zurich 3R Hub",
    "Institute of Landscape Ecology, Slovak Academy of Sciences",
    "Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR) & Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki",
    "Yucatrote",
    "European Forest Institute",
    "TU Dresden",
    "Institute of Environmental Engineering",
    "Xi’an University of Technology",
    "University of Toronto",
    "Uppsala University",
    "Centre for Advanced Studies Blanes"
  ],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 35,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1
      ],
      "name": "Johanna T Malle",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-6185-6449"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        2
      ],
      "name": "Christopher P O Reyer",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-1067-1492"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        3
      ],
      "name": "Yael Amitai",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-6113-7727"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        4
      ],
      "name": "Andrey L D Augustynczik",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-5513-5496"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        3
      ],
      "name": "Yaron Be’eri-Shlevin"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        5
      ],
      "name": "Elad Ben-Zur"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        4
      ],
      "name": "Peter Burek",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-6390-8487"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        6
      ],
      "name": "Tarunsinh Chaudhari",
      "orcid": "0009-0000-7818-2869"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        7,
        4
      ],
      "name": "Jinfeng Chang",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-4463-7778"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        8
      ],
      "name": "Alessio Collalti",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-4980-8487"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        8
      ],
      "name": "Daniela Dalmonech",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-1932-5011"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        9,
        10
      ],
      "name": "Shouro Dasgupta",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-4080-8066"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        2
      ],
      "name": "Iulii Didovets",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-1169-6165"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        11
      ],
      "name": "Marc Djahangard",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-9550-6343"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        12
      ],
      "name": "Laura Dobor",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-6712-9827"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        6
      ],
      "name": "Louis François"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        13
      ],
      "name": "Simon N Gosling",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-5973-6862"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        2
      ],
      "name": "Fred F Hattermann",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-6046-4670"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        14
      ],
      "name": "Shaochun Huang",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-7426-5181"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Heike Lischke",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-4284-5194"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        15,
        16,
        17
      ],
      "name": "Thomas Lorimer"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        12,
        18
      ],
      "name": "Katarína Merganičová"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        19,
        20
      ],
      "name": "Francesco Minunno",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-7658-6402"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        2,
        21,
        22
      ],
      "name": "Mats Nieberg",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-9755-8814"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        10
      ],
      "name": "Elizabeth J Z Robinson",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-4950-0183"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        15
      ],
      "name": "Martin Schmid",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-8699-5691"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        4,
        23
      ],
      "name": "Mikhail Smilovic",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-9651-8821"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        19,
        20
      ],
      "name": "Ritika Srinet",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-2957-7626"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        8
      ],
      "name": "Elia Vangi",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-9772-2258"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        24
      ],
      "name": "Xue Yang"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        11,
        25
      ],
      "name": "Rasoul Yousefpour"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        26
      ],
      "name": "Ana I Ayala"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        27
      ],
      "name": "Daniel Mercado-Bettin",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-4572-3029"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        2
      ],
      "name": "Dánnell Quesada-Chacón",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-5700-1846"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Dirk N Karger",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-7770-6229"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9ca49x0zbyk3y.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.1088/1748-9326/aeb279",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "9ca49x0zbyk3y",
  "issns": [
    "1748-9326"
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  "landing_url": "https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aeb279",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "feed-journal",
      "earth/environmental-science"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "2306|Climate variability and models"
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  "openalex": "W7221156810",
  "pdf_url": "https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aeb279/pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-27",
  "publisher": "IOP Publishing",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9ca49x0zbyk3y.ris",
  "sources": [
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      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:20Z",
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  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "earth",
      "origin": "openalex:2306|Climate variability and models",
      "subfield": "climate"
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  ],
  "title": "Does higher-resolution climate forcing improve impact model performance?",
  "title_text": "Does higher-resolution climate forcing improve impact model performance?",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:20:55Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9ca49x0zbyk3y",
  "venue": "Environmental Research Letters",
  "versions": []
}