CMCC works on shifting the focus of its climate modeling activities from the COSMO-CLM (CCLM) to the ICON-CLM (ICLM) climate model. Due to an emerging interest in very-high resolution downscaling, we have extended the dynamically downscaled ERA5 reanalysis at a horizontal grid spacing of ~2.2 km, available on the Data Delivery System (DDS) of the CMCC for the period 1981-2022, to the year 2023, whose results are presented in this report. ICLM reduces the warm bias with respect to E-OBS gridded observations that is especially present in warmer months. Furthermore, ICLM improves the representation of daily accumulated precipitation in spring over territories with a complex orography. In this regard, the evaluation of the two model outputs reveal a generally better agreement of ICLM with gridded observations, indicating an added value of this model with respect to CCLM for the year 2023. To confirm this trend further, however, analyses extended to further years are needed.
Keywords: Convection-permitting models, dynamical downscaling, reanalysis-driven
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