GLORI

The ItaliaMeteo Agency is partner of the project GLORI (Global-to-Regional ICON) Digital Twin, developing a configurable on-demand global-to-regional short-range high-resolution digital twin of the Earth’s weather system. GLORI is developed in a tri-lateral collaboration between Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, including operational centres as well as research institutes of these three countries, and with support by computing centres, to improve availability of and access to cutting-edge weather and extremes forecasting data for decision-making.

For Italy and Germany this project belongs to the bilateral cooperation programme IDEA-S4S (Italia – Deutschland science-4-services network in weather and climate), which aims at creating a hub of excellence for cutting edge research and translating the findings into improving operational services and university education.

GLORI provides more timely information needed for decision making and early warnings, such as short-range global and European storm-resolving km-scale (~3 km horizontal) predictions, as well as regional very high-resolution predictions (~500 m horizontal) on selected prototype-domains, the Alpine area and the Italian peninsula.

The Twin will facilitate a seamless connection between weather forecasts for parameters such as, e.g. precipitation, and the related impacts on hydrology, energy systems, urban environments, agriculture, and others. It will build on the existing forecasting system ICON, but will feature enhanced capabilities, such as higher model resolution, which is especially important in complex mountainous terrain, like the Alps. Selected use cases of flood forecasting (precipitation), energy production (wind, sunshine duration, Saharan dust events) or health applications (pollen, heat) will demonstrate the improved quality and usability of the forecast.

GLORI ingredients

Configurable and on-demand
The data generated by the digital twin will be accessible to users with different needs and data access can be adjusted by the user both in type and frequency of tailored forecast for different applications.

Global-to-regional
Based on the prediction capacity of the ICON weather and climate model, the digital twin can be used to make weather predictions for the whole world, as well as more detailed predictions for specific regions like the Alps or the Mediterranean.

Short-range
GLORI aims at improving the quality of short-range forecasts up to one week. It therefore aims at forecasting imminent events and weather conditions, with a focus on high-impact events, like extreme precipitation and storms.

High-resolution
The digital twin can make very detailed weather predictions thanks to the use of a new generation of supercomputers such as Leonardo at CINECA, where the capability of ICON to run on hybrid GPU-CPU architectures is exploited.

Digital Twin
In the context of weather modelling, the digital twin is a simulation of the weather that is designed to be as realistic as possible. It provides the opportunity to make simulations on the specific scenario needed by the user for their application and includes other models in cascade and data which permits forecasting of impacts.

Partners website: MeteoSwisse e Deutscher Wetterdienst