This article describes the non‐hydrostatic dynamical core developed for the ICOsahedral Non‐hydrostatic (ICON) modelling framework. ICON is a joint project of the German Weather Service (DWD) and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI‐M), targeting a unified modelling system for global numerical weather prediction (NWP) and climate modelling. Compared with the existing models at both institutions, the main achievements of ICON are exact local mass conservation, mass‐consistent tracer transport, a flexible grid nesting capability and the use of non‐hydrostatic equations on global domains. The dynamical core is formulated on an icosahedral‐triangular Arakawa C grid. Achieving mass conservation is facilitated by a flux‐form continuity equation with density as the prognostic variable. Time integration is performed with a two‐time‐level predictor–corrector scheme that is fully explicit, except for the terms describing vertical sound‐wave propagation. To achieve competitive computational efficiency, time splitting is applied between the dynamical core on the one hand and tracer advection, physics parametrizations and horizontal diffusion on the other hand. A sequence of tests with varying complexity indicates that the ICON dynamical core combines high numerical stability over steep mountain slopes with good accuracy and reasonably low diffusivity. Preliminary NWP test suites initialized with interpolated analysis data reveal that the ICON modelling system already achieves better skill scores than its predecessor at DWD, the operational hydrostatic Global Model Europe (GME), and at the same time requires significantly fewer computational resources.

Abstract. As part of a broader effort to develop nextgeneration models for numerical weather prediction and climate applications, a hydrostatic atmospheric dynamical core is developed as an intermediate step to evaluate a finitedifference discretization of the primitive equations on spherical icosahedral grids. Based on the need for mass-conserving discretizations for multi-resolution modelling as well as scalability and efficiency on massively parallel computing architectures, the dynamical core is built on triangular C-grids using relatively small discretization stencils. This paper presents the formulation and performance of the baseline version of the new dynamical core, focusing on properties of the numerical solutions in the setting of globally uniform resolution. Theoretical analysis reveals that the discrete divergence operator defined on a single triangular cell using the Gauss theorem is only first-order accurate, and introduces grid-scale noise to the discrete model. The noise can be suppressed by fourth-order hyper-diffusion of the horizontal wind field using a time-step and grid-size-dependent diffusion coefficient, at the expense of stronger damping than in the reference spectral model.A series of idealized tests of different complexity are performed. In the deterministic baroclinic wave test, solutions from the new dynamical core show the expected sensitivity to horizontal resolution, and converge to the reference solution at R2B6 (35 km grid spacing). In a dry climate test, the dynamical core correctly reproduces key features of the meridional heat and momentum transport by baroclinic eddies. In the aqua-planet simulations at 140 km resolution, the new model is able to reproduce the same equatorial wave propagation characteristics as in the reference spectral model, including the sensitivity of such characteristics to the meridional sea surface temperature profile.These results suggest that the triangular-C discretization provides a reasonable basis for further development. The main issues that need to be addressed are the grid-scale noise from the divergence operator which requires strong damping, and a phase error of the baroclinic wave at medium and low resolutions.

Abstract. Radiosonde soundings from the GCOS Reference Upper-Air Network (GRUAN) data record are shown to be consistent with Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Instrument (IASI)-measured radiances via LBLRTM (Line-By-Line Radiative Transfer Model) in the part of the spectrum that is mostly affected by water vapour absorption in the upper troposphere (from 700 hPa up). This result is key for climate data records, since GRUAN, IASI and LBLRTM constitute reference measurements or a reference radiative transfer model in each of their fields. This is specially the case for night-time radiosonde measurements. Although the sample size is small (16 cases), daytime GRUAN radiosonde measurements seem to have a small dry bias of 2.5 % in absolute terms of relative humidity, located mainly in the upper troposphere, with respect to LBLRTM and IASI. Full metrological closure is not yet possible and will not be until collocation uncertainties are better characterized and a full uncertainty covariance matrix is clarified for GRUAN.

A hydrostatic atmospheric dynamical core is developed for the purpose of global climate modelling. The model applies finite-difference methods to discretize the primitive equations on spherical icosahedral grids, using C-type staggering with triangles as control volumes for mass. This paper documents the numerical methods employed in the baseline version of the model, discusses their properties, and presents results from various idealized test cases. The evaluation shows that the new dynamical core is able to correctly represent the evolution of baroclinic eddies in the atmosphere as well as their role in heat and momentum transport. The simulations compare well with the reference solutions, and show a clear trend of convergence as the horizontal resolution increases. First results from two aqua-planet simulations are also presented, in which the equatorial wave spectra derived from tropical precipitation agree well with those simulated by a spectral transform model. The new dynamical core thus provides a good basis for further model development. Certain aspects of the model formulation that need further investigation and improvement are also pointed out

Abstract. The Icosahedral Shallow Water Model (ICOSWM) has been a first step in the development of the ICON (acronym for ICOsahedral Nonhydrostatic) models. ICON is a joint project of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg (MPI-M) and Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) for the development of new unified general circulation models for climate modeling and numerical weather forecasting on global or regional domains. A short description of ICOSWM is given. Standard test cases are used to test the performance of ICOSWM. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Spectral Transform Shallow Water Model (STSWM) has been used as reference for test cases without an analytical solution. The sensitivity of the model results to different model parameters is studied. The kinetic energy spectra are calculated and compared to the STSWM spectra. A comparison to the shallow water version of the current operational model GME at DWD is presented. In the framework of the ICON project an hydrostatic dynamical core has been developed, and a local grid refinement option and a non-hydrostatic dynamical core are under development. The results presented in this paper use the ICOSWM version at the end of 2008 and are a benchmark for the new options implemented in the development of these models.