Supported Configurations

ICON partners provide a number of supported scientific configurations, which already provide everything necessary for running ICON. Please note that there is no support for configurations that are not listed below.

AES Configurations

These configurations are supported by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. AES (Atmosphere in the Earth System) indicates the use of AES physics, which is designed for high-performance computing platforms and simulations with horizontal grids of 10 km or less on a variety of domains. The AES configurations can be generated using mkexp.

Aquaplanet

This configuration runs the ICON atomspheric component in interaction with an idealized ocean (e.g., SST-QOBS). This set-up allows a fast integration to achieve a climate mean state in comparison to AMIP simulations.

Bubble:

This is a simple idealized case used for code development. It simulates a buoyant, slab symmetric, bubble, on a small bi-periodic domain. The short simulation time (120 min, 240 timesteps) and the small domain (160 cells) allows output to be written at every timestep and grid point. The slab-symmetric setupt makes it easy to visualize.

Nest:

This case tests ICON’s capability of handling several meshes, nested within one another. The configuration uses a global R2B4 parent mesh, a first-level nested domain that covers the Atlantic ocean, and two second-level nested domains focused over the ITCZ and stratocumulus southern region. The latter two domains share the same parent mesh, which slightly complexifies this testing case meant at validating the parent-child nesting capability.

LAM:

The limited-area model (LAM) test cases is a 24h-long 20km-resolution simulation of the ORCESTRA domain, meant to verify the model’s capabilities of running with a single regionally-confined domain. It requires lateral boundary condition files feeding the domain’s edges with all required prognostics variable, interpolated in time and space.

AMIP:

This configuration follows the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) protocol. In this configuration, ICON solves the fluid dynamics equations in the atmosphere on the entire Globe using horizontal grid spacing of 40 km and finer. The atmosphere is coupled to a 1-D land module and to a non-dynamical ocean and sea ice. This means that sea surface temperature and sea ice area is prescribed. The atmosphere is vertically discretized in 90 levels, and the land is represented by 5 soil layers.

RCE:

This configuration is intended to study the Radiative Convective Equilibrium (RCE) achieved in ICON. RCE is an important conceptualization for understanding climate. RCE inquires about the thermodynamical equilibrium that a moist atmosphere would attain under constant incoming solar radiation, and is the result of a balance between the latent heating by condensation and the long-wave radiative cooling of the atmosphere. Simulated times in the order of 200 days give insight into how RCE is achieved in ICON. For the purposes of code development this case is run for 6 simulated hours.

Coupled configurations

Coupled AES:

Coupled ICON Earth System Model (ESM) configuration based on the AES atmosphere, ICON-Land land, and ICON ocean components. This set-up has been and is being used with slightly different configurations in various projects, e.g. nextGEMS or Destination Earth.

OES Configurations

The OES (Ocean in the Earth System) configurations are supported by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.

OMIP:

This is a close-to-production configuration for ICON’s ocean model component used for code development. In this ocean configuration all major available features can be enabled, as far as they can be activated simultaneously.

Shallow Water:

This is a shallow water configuration for ICON’s ocean component running on a hex grid. It follows Williamson et al., 1992 (Test 2) and can be regarded as a test of the ocean dynamical core.

ICON-Land Configurations

These configurations are supported by the Max Planck Institutes for Biogeochemistry and Meteorology. ICON-Land, which is hosting implementations of two different land surface models, JSBACH and QUINCY, can be run in coupled configurations (with an atmosphere model) as well as standalone, using prescribed climate forcing data from input files. Supported configurations running ICON-Land in coupled configuration are for example the coupled Atmosphere-Land-Ocean configuration Coupled AES, the AMIP type Atmosphere-Land configuration AMIP or ICON-XPP configurations with the NWP atmosphere. In the following configurations ICON-Land is running standalone with half-hourly timestep using re-analysis based forcing:

ICON-Land standalone with JSBACH:

This is a close-to-production configuration running ICON-Land standalone in JSBACH configuration (JSB). This kind of configuration is used for production runs, code development and testing. It is also used for the spin-up of the land carbon cycle to speed up the equilibration phase of coupled simulations.

ICON-Land standalone with QUINCY using JSBACH physics:

This is a close-to-production configuration running ICON-Land standalone with the QUINCY and JSBACH physics configuration (IQJ). This kind of configuration is used for code development, for testing, and for the spin-up of the terrestrial biogeochemical cycles when running coupled simulations with the IQJ configuration. Furthermore, the configuration is used for different model intercomparison studies such as NMIP (the global Nitrogen/N2O Model Inter-comparison Project) or TRENDY (as used for the Global Carbon Budget assessments).

NWP Use Cases

The use cases for NWP (Numerical Weather Prediction) are supported by Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD).

NWP Global (R2B06):

This use case runs a global ICON application with a resolution of about 40 km (R02B06). It includes a nest (R02B07) over Europe.

NWP Local (R19B07):

This use case runs a limited-area (local) ICON application over Germany with a resolution of about 2 km (R19B07). It is comparable to DWD’s operational application ICON-D2.

ART Use Cases

The use cases for ART (Aerosol and Reactive Trace gases interactions) are supported by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

ART VOLC_AERO (R2B06):

A volcanic eruption configuration with point source, full aerosol dynamics, multiple modes and mixing states, simplified chemistry and ARI

ART GLOBAL_ACC (R2B05):

A global Aerosol-Chemistry-Climate setup with simplified aerosol and chemistry, including all emissions. Efficient for long simulations and Earth-system applications

ICON SCM and LES

ICON-SCM/LES documentation:

ICON can be run in a single column model (SCM) and large-eddy simulation (LES) mode.