Session

DescriptionThe next step in climate modeling is so-called "storm-resolving" earth system models (SR-ESMs), which work at kilometer-scale. SR-ESMs make it possible for the first time to directly simulate small-scale processes like the formation of thunderstorms. Emerging exascale high-performance computers have the necessary computing power to carry out such high-resolution simulations for longer simulation times. These mainly heterogeneous hardware architectures pose challenges for all scientific software development efforts, and the ICON weather and climate model is no exception. Several initiatives address these technical challenges in order to exploit the possibilities of km-scale ICON simulations, for example to improve forecast skills or to produce climate information of the highest possible quality. This minisymposium will present the research direction of four of these initiatives: ICON-22, WarmWorld, EXCLAIM, and ICON-C. While the first three are independent projects, they are all tied together through the common ICON model and the need to enable scalable development while ensuring performance portability. These three projects will also contribute to the fourth: the ICON-Consolidated effort will pull together various developments into a consolidated ICON software package. At PASC22, first results of each project will be presented along with their synergies towards the overarching goal of storm-resolving simulations.