Our Research

The research of the Regional Climate Modelling group focuses on the development and application of regional climate models in various research projects. The downscaling of global climate projections (e.g. based on CMIP6 scenarios) provides spatially detailed information on the impacts of global climate change at the regional scale. This serves as a basis for further research on climate impacts, vulnerability and adaptation strategies. Within the working group, regional climate scenarios are calculated for the future as well as for the past (palaeoclimate). We are also working on regional decadal predictions and investigate the influence of climate change on current extreme events (e.g. the floods in the Ahr valley in 2021) using storyline approaches.

The ICON-Model in its regional configuration ICON-CLM serves as the main tool for working on these research topics. ICON-CLM is a variable grid atmospheric model that can be applied to the entire mesoscale (from the synoptic scale with a horizontal grid size of 100 km to convection-resolving simulations at the kilometre scale). Our group is strongly involved in the activities of the CLM-Community and actively participates in the further development of ICON-CLM through various research projects.