Articles | Volume 19, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-755-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-755-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Development and technical paper
| Highlight paper
| 
23 Jan 2026
Development and technical paper | Highlight paper |
| 23 Jan 2026
| 23 Jan 2026
Operational numerical weather prediction with ICON on GPUs (version 2024.10)
Xavier Lapillonne
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Daniel Hupp
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Fabian Gessler
Center for Climate Systems Modeling C2SM, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
André Walser
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
deceased, 19 February 2025
Andreas Pauling
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Annika Lauber
Center for Climate Systems Modeling C2SM, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
Benjamin Cumming
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
Carlos Osuna
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Christoph Müller
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Claire Merker
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Daniel Leuenberger
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
David Leutwyler
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Dmitry Alexeev
NVIDIA, Zürich, Switzerland
Gabriel Vollenweider
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Guillaume Van Parys
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Jonas Jucker
Center for Climate Systems Modeling C2SM, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
Lukas Jansing
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Marco Arpagaus
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Marco Induni
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
Marek Jacob
Deutscher Wetterdienst, Offenbach am Main, Germany
Matthias Kraushaar
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
Michael Jähn
Center for Climate Systems Modeling C2SM, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
Mikael Stellio
Center for Climate Systems Modeling C2SM, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
Oliver Fuhrer
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Petra Baumann
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Philippe Steiner
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Pirmin Kaufmann
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland
Remo Dietlicher
Center for Climate Systems Modeling C2SM, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
Ralf Müller
Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum, Hamburg, Germany
Sergey Kosukhin
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany
Thomas C. Schulthess
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
Ulrich Schättler
Deutscher Wetterdienst, Offenbach am Main, Germany
Victoria Cherkas
Center for Climate Systems Modeling C2SM, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
William Sawyer
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
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Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 779–811, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-779-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-779-2023, 2023
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Julie Thérèse Pasquier, Jan Henneberger, Fabiola Ramelli, Annika Lauber, Robert Oscar David, Jörg Wieder, Tim Carlsen, Rosa Gierens, Marion Maturilli, and Ulrike Lohmann
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 15579–15601, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-15579-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-15579-2022, 2022
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Marco A. Giorgetta, William Sawyer, Xavier Lapillonne, Panagiotis Adamidis, Dmitry Alexeev, Valentin Clément, Remo Dietlicher, Jan Frederik Engels, Monika Esch, Henning Franke, Claudia Frauen, Walter M. Hannah, Benjamin R. Hillman, Luis Kornblueh, Philippe Marti, Matthew R. Norman, Robert Pincus, Sebastian Rast, Daniel Reinert, Reiner Schnur, Uwe Schulzweida, and Bjorn Stevens
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 6985–7016, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-6985-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-6985-2022, 2022
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This work presents a first version of the ICON atmosphere model that works not only on CPUs, but also on GPUs. This GPU-enabled ICON version is benchmarked on two GPU machines and a CPU machine. While the weak scaling is very good on CPUs and GPUs, the strong scaling is poor on GPUs. But the high performance of GPU machines allowed for first simulations of a short period of the quasi-biennial oscillation at very high resolution with explicit convection and gravity wave forcing.
Heike Konow, Florian Ewald, Geet George, Marek Jacob, Marcus Klingebiel, Tobias Kölling, Anna E. Luebke, Theresa Mieslinger, Veronika Pörtge, Jule Radtke, Michael Schäfer, Hauke Schulz, Raphaela Vogel, Martin Wirth, Sandrine Bony, Susanne Crewell, André Ehrlich, Linda Forster, Andreas Giez, Felix Gödde, Silke Groß, Manuel Gutleben, Martin Hagen, Lutz Hirsch, Friedhelm Jansen, Theresa Lang, Bernhard Mayer, Mario Mech, Marc Prange, Sabrina Schnitt, Jessica Vial, Andreas Walbröl, Manfred Wendisch, Kevin Wolf, Tobias Zinner, Martin Zöger, Felix Ament, and Bjorn Stevens
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 5545–5563, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-5545-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-5545-2021, 2021
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The German research aircraft HALO took part in the research campaign EUREC4A in January and February 2020. The focus area was the tropical Atlantic east of the island of Barbados. We describe the characteristics of the 15 research flights, provide auxiliary information, derive combined cloud mask products from all instruments that observe clouds on board the aircraft, and provide code examples that help new users of the data to get started.
Zane Dedekind, Annika Lauber, Sylvaine Ferrachat, and Ulrike Lohmann
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 15115–15134, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-15115-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-15115-2021, 2021
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The RACLETS campaign combined cloud and snow research to improve the understanding of precipitation formation in clouds. A numerical weather prediction model, COSMO, was used to assess the importance of ice crystal enhancement by ice–ice collisions for cloud properties. We found that the number of ice crystals increased by 1 to 3 orders of magnitude when ice–ice collisions were permitted to occur, reducing localized regions of high precipitation and, thereby, improving the model performance.
Bjorn Stevens, Sandrine Bony, David Farrell, Felix Ament, Alan Blyth, Christopher Fairall, Johannes Karstensen, Patricia K. Quinn, Sabrina Speich, Claudia Acquistapace, Franziska Aemisegger, Anna Lea Albright, Hugo Bellenger, Eberhard Bodenschatz, Kathy-Ann Caesar, Rebecca Chewitt-Lucas, Gijs de Boer, Julien Delanoë, Leif Denby, Florian Ewald, Benjamin Fildier, Marvin Forde, Geet George, Silke Gross, Martin Hagen, Andrea Hausold, Karen J. Heywood, Lutz Hirsch, Marek Jacob, Friedhelm Jansen, Stefan Kinne, Daniel Klocke, Tobias Kölling, Heike Konow, Marie Lothon, Wiebke Mohr, Ann Kristin Naumann, Louise Nuijens, Léa Olivier, Robert Pincus, Mira Pöhlker, Gilles Reverdin, Gregory Roberts, Sabrina Schnitt, Hauke Schulz, A. Pier Siebesma, Claudia Christine Stephan, Peter Sullivan, Ludovic Touzé-Peiffer, Jessica Vial, Raphaela Vogel, Paquita Zuidema, Nicola Alexander, Lyndon Alves, Sophian Arixi, Hamish Asmath, Gholamhossein Bagheri, Katharina Baier, Adriana Bailey, Dariusz Baranowski, Alexandre Baron, Sébastien Barrau, Paul A. Barrett, Frédéric Batier, Andreas Behrendt, Arne Bendinger, Florent Beucher, Sebastien Bigorre, Edmund Blades, Peter Blossey, Olivier Bock, Steven Böing, Pierre Bosser, Denis Bourras, Pascale Bouruet-Aubertot, Keith Bower, Pierre Branellec, Hubert Branger, Michal Brennek, Alan Brewer, Pierre-Etienne Brilouet, Björn Brügmann, Stefan A. Buehler, Elmo Burke, Ralph Burton, Radiance Calmer, Jean-Christophe Canonici, Xavier Carton, Gregory Cato Jr., Jude Andre Charles, Patrick Chazette, Yanxu Chen, Michal T. Chilinski, Thomas Choularton, Patrick Chuang, Shamal Clarke, Hugh Coe, Céline Cornet, Pierre Coutris, Fleur Couvreux, Susanne Crewell, Timothy Cronin, Zhiqiang Cui, Yannis Cuypers, Alton Daley, Gillian M. Damerell, Thibaut Dauhut, Hartwig Deneke, Jean-Philippe Desbios, Steffen Dörner, Sebastian Donner, Vincent Douet, Kyla Drushka, Marina Dütsch, André Ehrlich, Kerry Emanuel, Alexandros Emmanouilidis, Jean-Claude Etienne, Sheryl Etienne-Leblanc, Ghislain Faure, Graham Feingold, Luca Ferrero, Andreas Fix, Cyrille Flamant, Piotr Jacek Flatau, Gregory R. Foltz, Linda Forster, Iulian Furtuna, Alan Gadian, Joseph Galewsky, Martin Gallagher, Peter Gallimore, Cassandra Gaston, Chelle Gentemann, Nicolas Geyskens, Andreas Giez, John Gollop, Isabelle Gouirand, Christophe Gourbeyre, Dörte de Graaf, Geiske E. de Groot, Robert Grosz, Johannes Güttler, Manuel Gutleben, Kashawn Hall, George Harris, Kevin C. Helfer, Dean Henze, Calvert Herbert, Bruna Holanda, Antonio Ibanez-Landeta, Janet Intrieri, Suneil Iyer, Fabrice Julien, Heike Kalesse, Jan Kazil, Alexander Kellman, Abiel T. Kidane, Ulrike Kirchner, Marcus Klingebiel, Mareike Körner, Leslie Ann Kremper, Jan Kretzschmar, Ovid Krüger, Wojciech Kumala, Armin Kurz, Pierre L'Hégaret, Matthieu Labaste, Tom Lachlan-Cope, Arlene Laing, Peter Landschützer, Theresa Lang, Diego Lange, Ingo Lange, Clément Laplace, Gauke Lavik, Rémi Laxenaire, Caroline Le Bihan, Mason Leandro, Nathalie Lefevre, Marius Lena, Donald Lenschow, Qiang Li, Gary Lloyd, Sebastian Los, Niccolò Losi, Oscar Lovell, Christopher Luneau, Przemyslaw Makuch, Szymon Malinowski, Gaston Manta, Eleni Marinou, Nicholas Marsden, Sebastien Masson, Nicolas Maury, Bernhard Mayer, Margarette Mayers-Als, Christophe Mazel, Wayne McGeary, James C. McWilliams, Mario Mech, Melina Mehlmann, Agostino Niyonkuru Meroni, Theresa Mieslinger, Andreas Minikin, Peter Minnett, Gregor Möller, Yanmichel Morfa Avalos, Caroline Muller, Ionela Musat, Anna Napoli, Almuth Neuberger, Christophe Noisel, David Noone, Freja Nordsiek, Jakub L. Nowak, Lothar Oswald, Douglas J. Parker, Carolyn Peck, Renaud Person, Miriam Philippi, Albert Plueddemann, Christopher Pöhlker, Veronika Pörtge, Ulrich Pöschl, Lawrence Pologne, Michał Posyniak, Marc Prange, Estefanía Quiñones Meléndez, Jule Radtke, Karim Ramage, Jens Reimann, Lionel Renault, Klaus Reus, Ashford Reyes, Joachim Ribbe, Maximilian Ringel, Markus Ritschel, Cesar B. Rocha, Nicolas Rochetin, Johannes Röttenbacher, Callum Rollo, Haley Royer, Pauline Sadoulet, Leo Saffin, Sanola Sandiford, Irina Sandu, Michael Schäfer, Vera Schemann, Imke Schirmacher, Oliver Schlenczek, Jerome Schmidt, Marcel Schröder, Alfons Schwarzenboeck, Andrea Sealy, Christoph J. Senff, Ilya Serikov, Samkeyat Shohan, Elizabeth Siddle, Alexander Smirnov, Florian Späth, Branden Spooner, M. Katharina Stolla, Wojciech Szkółka, Simon P. de Szoeke, Stéphane Tarot, Eleni Tetoni, Elizabeth Thompson, Jim Thomson, Lorenzo Tomassini, Julien Totems, Alma Anna Ubele, Leonie Villiger, Jan von Arx, Thomas Wagner, Andi Walther, Ben Webber, Manfred Wendisch, Shanice Whitehall, Anton Wiltshire, Allison A. Wing, Martin Wirth, Jonathan Wiskandt, Kevin Wolf, Ludwig Worbes, Ethan Wright, Volker Wulfmeyer, Shanea Young, Chidong Zhang, Dongxiao Zhang, Florian Ziemen, Tobias Zinner, and Martin Zöger
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 4067–4119, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-4067-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-4067-2021, 2021
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The EUREC4A field campaign, designed to test hypothesized mechanisms by which clouds respond to warming and benchmark next-generation Earth-system models, is presented. EUREC4A comprised roughly 5 weeks of measurements in the downstream winter trades of the North Atlantic – eastward and southeastward of Barbados. It was the first campaign that attempted to characterize the full range of processes and scales influencing trade wind clouds.
Jeremy McGibbon, Noah D. Brenowitz, Mark Cheeseman, Spencer K. Clark, Johann P. S. Dahm, Eddie C. Davis, Oliver D. Elbert, Rhea C. George, Lucas M. Harris, Brian Henn, Anna Kwa, W. Andre Perkins, Oliver Watt-Meyer, Tobias F. Wicky, Christopher S. Bretherton, and Oliver Fuhrer
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 4401–4409, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-4401-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-4401-2021, 2021
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FV3GFS is a weather and climate model written in Fortran. It uses Fortran so that it can run fast, but this makes it hard to add features if you do not (or even if you do) know Fortran. We have written a Python interface to FV3GFS that lets you import the Fortran model as a Python package. We show examples of how this is used to write
modelscripts, which reproduce or build on what the Fortran model can do. You could do this same wrapping for any compiled model, not just FV3GFS.
Gabriel Vollenweider, Elisa Spreitzer, and Sebastian Schemm
Weather Clim. Dynam. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-2021-31, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-2021-31, 2021
Publication in WCD not foreseen
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The interactions between the dry and moist components of the atmosphere and the influence of, for example, the phase transition of water on the atmospheric circulation are often studied from the potential vorticity (PV) framework. Changes in the PV due to, for example, condensation can relate to changes in the static stability or vorticity. To better the interaction between these two drivers of PV changes, we explore the usefulness of a novel vorticity-and-stability diagram.
Fabiola Ramelli, Jan Henneberger, Robert O. David, Johannes Bühl, Martin Radenz, Patric Seifert, Jörg Wieder, Annika Lauber, Julie T. Pasquier, Ronny Engelmann, Claudia Mignani, Maxime Hervo, and Ulrike Lohmann
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 6681–6706, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-6681-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-6681-2021, 2021
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Orographic mixed-phase clouds are an important source of precipitation, but the ice formation processes within them remain uncertain. Here we investigate the origin of ice crystals in a mixed-phase cloud in the Swiss Alps using aerosol and cloud data from in situ and remote sensing observations. We found that ice formation primarily occurs in cloud top generating cells. Our results indicate that secondary ice processes are active in the feeder region, which can enhance orographic precipitation.
Fabiola Ramelli, Jan Henneberger, Robert O. David, Annika Lauber, Julie T. Pasquier, Jörg Wieder, Johannes Bühl, Patric Seifert, Ronny Engelmann, Maxime Hervo, and Ulrike Lohmann
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 5151–5172, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-5151-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-5151-2021, 2021
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Interactions between dynamics, microphysics and orography can enhance precipitation. Yet the exact role of these interactions is still uncertain. Here we investigate the role of low-level blocking and turbulence for precipitation by combining remote sensing and in situ observations. The observations show that blocked flow can induce the formation of feeder clouds and that turbulence can enhance hydrometeor growth, demonstrating the importance of local flow effects for orographic precipitation.
Annika Lauber, Jan Henneberger, Claudia Mignani, Fabiola Ramelli, Julie T. Pasquier, Jörg Wieder, Maxime Hervo, and Ulrike Lohmann
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 3855–3870, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-3855-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-3855-2021, 2021
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An accurate prediction of the ice crystal number concentration (ICNC) is important to determine the radiation budget, lifetime, and precipitation formation of clouds. Even though secondary-ice processes can increase the ICNC by several orders of magnitude, they are poorly constrained and lack a well-founded quantification. During measurements on a mountain slope, a high ICNC of small ice crystals was observed just below 0 °C, attributed to a secondary-ice process and parametrized in this study.
Cited articles
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Executive editor
Increasingly, new supercomputers depend on GPUs for the vast bulk of their processing power. This makes the effective exploitation of GPUs an imperative across geoscientific modelling. This paper presents the port of a full numerical weather prediction system to GPU. It provides an excellent example of how such a port can be achieved in practice while delivering significant performance benefits. As such, this work offers particularly valuable guidance for the wider modelling community.
Increasingly, new supercomputers depend on GPUs for the vast bulk of their processing power....
Short summary
The ICON climate and numerical weather prediction model was fully ported to Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) using OpenACC compiler directives, covering all components required for operational weather prediction. The GPU port together with several performance optimizations led to a speed-up of 5.6× when comparing to traditional Central Processing Units (CPUs) . Thanks to this adaptation effort, MeteoSwiss became the first national weather service to run the ICON model operationally on GPUs.
The ICON climate and numerical weather prediction model was fully ported to Graphical Processing...
