Dübendorf ZH – Researchers from Switzerland and Germany have granted the ICON weather and climate model an open source license. The team, with the participation of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, is thus providing interested parties with transparent access to the model.
With the participation of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa), researchers from Switzerland and Germany have developed a way to provide the ICON climate and weather model with an open source license. According to a press release, all interested parties and scientists will be able to access the model. This should not only make research and the work of the institutes behind ICON more transparent, but also promote scientific development, according to the press release.
ICON (ICOsahedral Non-hydrostatic modeling framework) is a numerical weather model that uses three-dimensional computer simulation to calculate changes in the atmosphere over the coming hours and days. The model is primarily used by national weather services such as the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss) or the German Weather Service (DWD).
Behind the development of the ICON model is the Swiss Center for Climate Systems Modeling (C2SM) with the participation of Empa, MeteoSwiss, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) in Birmensdorf ZH as well as the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ), the DWD, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M).
"The open-source licensing will simplify the exchange with our partners in science and could support the establishment of new innovative startups in the environmental sector," Dominik Brunner, Head of the Atmospheric Modeling and Remote Sensing Group in the Empa Department of Air Pollutants/Environmental Technology, is quoted in the announcement. ce/ww