The dynamic core of the ICON model (icosahedral non-hydrostatic general circulation model) is a joint development of the ICON consortia. ICON is designed in particular for massively parallel computer architectures. ICON is available as an open-source model and is constantly being developed further.
Simulation of ice clouds in ICON
Simulation of contrail induced cirrus perturbations over Germany with ICON-LEM. Shown is the number concentration of ice crystals in three different model levels.
The DLR Institute of Atmospheric Physics is involved in the development of ICON. Our work is focused on the development of the community interface (ComIn) for ICON. MESSy will also be connected to ICON on the basis of ComIn. Furthermore, we are working on improvements to the representation of physical processes in the model and on the integration of complex model diagnostics in massively parallel computer architectures with distributed memory.
We use the Large Eddy Model (LEM) configuration of ICON to study processes important for contrail formation and evolution. To that purpose we have included a parameterization for contrail formation in ICON-LEM. The model has been also used to simulate contrail properties connected with measurement campaigns.
