--- DOAJ_listed: '1' OA_place: publisher OA_type: gold _id: '21657' abstract: - lang: eng text: We compare three global kilometer-scale models (ICON, IFS and NICAM) to clarify the advantages and challenges of high-resolution global weather and climate modeling, using different approaches to represent convection, from fully parameterized to fully explicit. Our analysis focuses on tropical precipitation characteristics spanning a wide range of spatio-temporal scales—including the diurnal cycle, extreme precipitation, convective organization, and the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO)—along with interactions between convection and the thermodynamic environment. All three models commonly show weaker convective organization with smaller precipitation cells than observed, though the strength of the bias varies by model. This diversity is introduced by differences in the representation of (a) convective initiation affected by the convective sensitivity to moisture and (b) tropospheric moistening associated with deep convection. Models with stronger thermodynamic-convection coupling increase environmental moisture near convection, thereby enhancing convective organization. This has important upscale effects on the MJO; while IFS and NICAM capture its eastward propagation well, ICON has difficulty reproducing it. The amplitudes and phases of precipitation diurnal cycles over land show much greater disagreement among the models than over ocean, influenced by how convection is initiated. Biases in rain evaporation and cold pool formation hinder the propagation of mesoscale convection, leading to errors such as the misrepresentation of nocturnal convection moving off the coast of Sumatra in IFS and ICON. These results highlight the importance of thermodynamic-convection coupling in realistically simulating tropical convection across scales. To improve this coupling, kilometer-scale models require better representation of the interaction between resolved convection and three-dimensional turbulent mixing. acknowledgement: 'We thank Peter Bechtold, Lukas Brunner, Peter Dueben, Richard Forbes, Estibaliz Gascon, and Benoit Vanniere for providing insightful comments on the present study. We also thank Sebastian Milinski, Xabier Pedruzo and Thomas Rackow for their contributions to setting up IFS-FESOM for nextGEMS. We are also grateful to Dr. Walter Hannah and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments, which improved the original version of the manuscript. D. Takasuka was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grants 20H05728 and 24K22893 and by JSPS Core-to-Core Program, “International Core-to-Core Project on Global Storm Resolving Analysis” (Grant Number: JPJSCCA20220001). T. Becker was supported by the Horizon 2020 project nextGEMS under grant agreement number 101003470. J. Bao acknowledges funding from the European Union''s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant (grant agreement No 101034413). The ICON and IFS simulations were performed with supercomputing resources of the German Climate Computing Centre (Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum, DKRZ) granted by its Scientific Steering Committee (WLA) under project ID 1235. The NICAM simulation was performed on the supercomputer Fugaku (proposal numbers hp220132, hp230078, hp230108, hp230278, and hp240267).' article_number: e2025MS005343 article_processing_charge: Yes article_type: original author: - first_name: Daisuke full_name: Takasuka, Daisuke last_name: Takasuka - first_name: Tobias full_name: Becker, Tobias last_name: Becker - first_name: Jiawei full_name: Bao, Jiawei id: bb9a7399-fefd-11ed-be3c-ae648fd1d160 last_name: Bao citation: ama: Takasuka D, Becker T, Bao J. Precipitation characteristics and thermodynamic-convection coupling in global kilometer-scale simulations. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. 2026;18(3). doi:10.1029/2025MS005343 apa: Takasuka, D., Becker, T., & Bao, J. (2026). Precipitation characteristics and thermodynamic-convection coupling in global kilometer-scale simulations. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025MS005343 chicago: Takasuka, Daisuke, Tobias Becker, and Jiawei Bao. “Precipitation Characteristics and Thermodynamic-Convection Coupling in Global Kilometer-Scale Simulations.” Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. Wiley, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025MS005343. ieee: D. Takasuka, T. Becker, and J. Bao, “Precipitation characteristics and thermodynamic-convection coupling in global kilometer-scale simulations,” Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, vol. 18, no. 3. Wiley, 2026. ista: Takasuka D, Becker T, Bao J. 2026. Precipitation characteristics and thermodynamic-convection coupling in global kilometer-scale simulations. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. 18(3), e2025MS005343. mla: Takasuka, Daisuke, et al. “Precipitation Characteristics and Thermodynamic-Convection Coupling in Global Kilometer-Scale Simulations.” Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, vol. 18, no. 3, e2025MS005343, Wiley, 2026, doi:10.1029/2025MS005343. short: D. Takasuka, T. Becker, J. Bao, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems 18 (2026). corr_author: '1' date_created: 2026-04-05T22:01:31Z date_published: 2026-03-01T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-04-07T09:14:51Z day: '01' ddc: - '550' department: - _id: CaMu doi: 10.1029/2025MS005343 ec_funded: 1 file: - access_level: open_access checksum: ca7dac4bab31348d0640ed22580c6dce content_type: application/pdf creator: dernst date_created: 2026-04-07T09:11:23Z date_updated: 2026-04-07T09:11:23Z file_id: '21665' file_name: 2026_JAMES_Takasuka.pdf file_size: 3854313 relation: main_file success: 1 file_date_updated: 2026-04-07T09:11:23Z has_accepted_license: '1' intvolume: ' 18' issue: '3' language: - iso: eng month: '03' oa: 1 oa_version: None project: - _id: fc2ed2f7-9c52-11eb-aca3-c01059dda49c call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '101034413' name: 'IST-BRIDGE: International postdoctoral program' publication: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems publication_identifier: eissn: - 1942-2466 publication_status: published publisher: Wiley quality_controlled: '1' scopus_import: '1' status: public title: Precipitation characteristics and thermodynamic-convection coupling in global kilometer-scale simulations tmp: image: /images/cc_by.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) short: CC BY (4.0) type: journal_article user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 18 year: '2026' ...