Impact of horizontal resolution and model time step on European precipitation extremes in the OpenIFS 43r3 atmospheric model

Liu, Yingxue; Kjellsson, Joakim; Savita, Abhishek; Park, Wonsun

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-5435-2025

Articles | Volume 18, issue 17

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-5435-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-5435-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 17

Model evaluation paper

|

01 Sep 2025

Model evaluation paper |

| 01 Sep 2025

Impact of horizontal resolution and model time step on European precipitation extremes in the OpenIFS 43r3 atmospheric model

Yingxue Liu, Joakim Kjellsson, Abhishek Savita, and Wonsun Park

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-5435-2025-supplement

Data sets

Impact of horizontal resolution and model time step on European precipitation extremes in the OpenIFS 43r3 atmosphere model Y. Liu https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15497274

ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1940 to present H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

GPCC Full Data Daily Version 2022 at 1.0°: Daily Land-Surface Precipitation from Rain-Gauges built on GTS-based and Historic Data M. Ziese et al. https://doi.org/10.5676/DWD_GPCC/FD_D_V2022_100

Short summary

The impact of horizontal resolution and model time step on extreme precipitation over Europe is examined in OpenIFS. We find that the biases are reduced with higher horizontal resolution but not with a shorter time step. The large-scale precipitation is sensitive to the horizontal resolution and time step; however, the convective precipitation is sensitive to the model time step. Higher horizontal resolution is more important for extreme precipitation simulation than a shorter time step.