| Note |
The model COSMO-EU (COSMO Europe) covers the whole of Europe with 665 x 657 = 436.905 grid points and a grid spacing of 7 km. In the vertical there are 40 layers from the surface up to about 24 km above ground. The total number of grid points of COSMO-EU is 17.5 million. The horizontal size of a quadratic grid box is 49 km2, while the grid box size of the global NWP model ICON (grid spacing 13 km) is 173 km2. Therefore, COSMO-EU encompasses many local details of the landscape and related flow phenomena which have a pronounced impact on the weather and which are not included in ICON, e.g. land / sea breeze circulations at the North and Baltic Sea, channelling of the flow in the upper Rhine valley, the modification of clouds and precipitation due to the highlands and mountains as well as the simulation of other smaller scale meteorological phenomena. |