Use of Ecoclimap instead of globcover in ICON

[sebasVP77]

Dear ICON developers,

I am running a simulation focused on the Antarctic and mineral dust emission. The grid was created using the Globcover2009 and Glob configuration (R2B7 with a nested R2B) via Zonda, with ART external parameter generation activated.

In this configuration, I noticed that ice around glaciers is overestimated compared to recent studies (e.g., in Iceland). To address this, I tried switching to Ecoclimap-SG with the Merit configuration, which better matches recent observations regarding soil type and ice cover.

However, when using these new external input parameters, the model fails to run. I checked the ICON manual and the namelist overview, and I could not find information on configuring the namelist for Ecoclimap — it seems that only Globcover is supported.

Note: I also tried Globcover2009 + Merit as an alternative, but this still results in ice overestimation.

Could you clarify whether simulations using Ecoclimap are currently possible, or am I missing a configuration step?

Thank you for your help.

Best regards,
Sebastian

@stelliom

[stelliom]

Dear Sebastian,

As far as I know, there are users successfully running ICON with data from ECOCLIMAP-SG. However, I never did this myself, so I am not sure on the namelist configuration needed for this. May I ask you what the ICON error looks like?

Cheers,
Mikael

[sebasVP77]

Dear Mikael,

Thank you for your answer. The error indicates that the input parameter name is not recognized when using Ecoclimap-SG instead of Globcover2009. This appears to be related to the namelist variable itype_lndtbl. As far as I know, it only accepts GLC2000 and Globcover2009. Additionally, ECOCLIMAP-SG has 33 land cover classes, while Globcover2009 has 23, which raises an error.

However, I was able to implement Ecoclimap-SG by mapping its classes to the same definitions used in Globcover2009, according to this document Ecoclimap-SG to Globcover2009.

Best,
Sebastian

[stelliom]

Dear Sebastian,

Ok, glad that you could work around the issue. Let me know if I should investigate on how other people use Ecoclimap-SG or if you are satisfied with your workaround. If that's the case, feel free to close this issue.

Cheers,
Mikael