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CMIP Annual Reports
Annual Report 2022-2023
The report includes:
- Updates from the CMIP Panel, the WGCM Infrastructure Panel (WIP) and all of our CMIP7 Task Teams,
- Highlighted scientific publications which have made use of CMIP,
- A summary of the engagement activities that have taken place across the community in the last 18 months.
It’s been an exciting 18 months of developments with the introduction of two new Panel co-chairs, the implementation of the CMIP International Project Office, and the CMIP7 Task Teams starting work on planning for the future phases of CMIP. We’d like to extend a huge thank you to the community for the continued engagement and feedback on CMIP.
Looking ahead to next year, CMIP leadership (CMIP Panel co-chairs John Dunne and Helene Hewitt, and the WIP co-chairs Paul Durack and Matthew Mizielinski) concluded:
“We look forward to continuing to work with the community in the year ahead as we facilitate community climate science through CMIP6Plus, finalise the CMIP7 experimental design and plans for supporting infrastructure, engage with the new IPCC leadership, and make efforts towards operationalising key components of CMIP to deliver the next phase.”
We’re looking forward to another busy year!
Citation
Dingley, B., O’Rourke, E., Turner, B., CMIP Panel Members, WGCM Infrastructure Panel Members, and CMIP7 Task Team Members (2023), CMIP Annual Report 2022-2023. doi:10.5281/zenodo.8101810.
Information for Society: from CMIP to decision makers: Report from EGU24 Townhall
During EGU24, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), Regional Information for Society (RIfS), and Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) International Project Offices (IPOs) of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) organised and facilitated an information gathering Townhall. The Townhall was designed to understand the challenges of producing information for society based on climate science. This included topics ranging from data access, to the treatment of uncertainty and expert judgement over what constitutes robust, decision-ready information.
This report summarises the discussions during the event.
Citation
Dingley, B., Goldenson, N., Lake, L., Nilsson, L., and O’Rourke, E. (2024), Information for Society: from CMIP to decision makers: Report from EGU24 Townhall. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12163165
CMIP and CORDEX Analysis and Evaluation Tools – Report from WCRP Open Science Conference 2023
At the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)’s Open Science Conference (OSC), the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) and Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) International Project Offices organised this workshop bringing together CMIP and CORDEX modellers and users. The OSC took place in Kigali, Rwanda, between 23-28 October 2023.
During this event, held on 23 October, some evaluation and analysis tools were showcased alongside their primary area of use and advantages as well as their limitations.
After the initial tool demos, the event split into break-out groups to allow participants to have a more in depth demonstration and discussion on the tools of their choice. There was time for participants to move around the breakout groups to learn about a number of different tools during the session. The input from the break-out groups was then presented back in plenum.
Here, we present a short report from the event, summarising the demonstrations and discussions that took place.
Citation
Nasser, A., Reboita, M., Lake, L., and Nilsson, L. (2024), CMIP and CORDEX evaluation and analysis tools: Report from WCRP Open Science Conference 2023. doi:10.5281/zenodo.10619796.
Baseline variables for climate model intercomparison and evaluation – Community survey summary report
The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) has grown considerably and now serves a wide range of communities, all with their own specialised requirements for data. The CMIP Data Request function, led by Martin Juckes of UKRI-STFC and facilitated by the CMIP International Project Office (hereafter CMIP IPO) is establishing a process to address the challenges of too many variables listed as top priority, and its associated burden on the data providers, and the increasingly growing needs of CMIP data users. It is envisaged that a core set of variables can form a baseline for exchange of climate model data, in any intercomparison project, in accordance with FAIR data and Open Science principles. Establishing this baseline will address the community intention discussed at WGCM 2019 in Barcelona of giving more authority and meaning to variable prioritisation.
This report provides a summary of the Baseline variables for Climate Model Intercomparison and Evaluation Phase 3 Community Survey, an overview of the responses, and outlines the next steps in the development of the baseline variables.
Citation
O’Rourke, E. Turner, B. and Dingley, B. (2022), Baseline variables for climate model intercomparison and evaluation – Community survey summary report, CMIP International Project Office, Harwell, UK. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.8248691
Priority variables for evaluation and exploitation of WCRP climate simulations: Workshop Report
The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) has grown considerably and now serves a wide range of communities, all with their own specialised requirements for data. The CMIP Data Request function, led by Martin Juckes of UKRI-STFC, is establishing a process to address the challenges presented by having too many variables listed as top priority while meeting the needs of both data providers and users. It is envisaged that a core set of variables can form a baseline for exchange of climate model data, in any intercomparison project, in accordance with FAIR data and Open Science principles. Establishing this baseline will address the community intention discussed at WGCM 2019 in Barcelona of giving more authority and meaning to variable prioritisation. The intention is to publish these as a Geoscientific Model Development (GMD) paper.
In spring 2022, members of the CMIP community were engaged in a survey and two workshops on the proposed methodological approach and a paper publication process to devise an agreed list of core variables. The two workshops, held in May 2022, were based upon the 32 responses to the survey issued by the CMIP IPO in April 2022 to Modelling Centre and Data Request Leads, and the MIP Chairs. The original consultation call can be found here.
The report is the outcome of two workshops, convened by the IPO in May 2022, to discuss top priority variables in the context of the international exchange of climate simulations for evaluation and exploitation.
Citation
O’Rourke, E. and Turner, B. (eds). 2022: Priority variables for evaluation and exploitation of WCRP climate simulations workshop report Top priority variables community workshop – 12 and 17 May 2022. Available from: https://doi.org/10.59555/TUOC4428
GCOS 2022 World Café: Strengthening the observational-modelling interface to meet emerging scientific needs critical to our understanding of climate change
This World café session was focused on developing community ideas to strengthen the observational-modelling interface towards meeting near term and emerging scientific needs. This fast-paced interactive session on Day 2 of the GCOS 2022 conference investigated the current and emerging key challenges and developed a provisional community roadmap of practical actions which were displayed on Day 3 of the conference and are being used to support evolving GCOS, WCRP CMIP and ESMO and ESA work programmes.
A summary report was issued on the 19th October to the GCOS conference organisers. Discussion was vibrant and brought out many ideas for actions to further enhance collaboration and co-development across the modelling, observation and user communities.
Current bottlenecks identified:
- Developing climate observation networks – The modelling and observation communities need to identify priority in-situ reference observation gaps needed for modelling evaluation, earth observation validation and improved physical process understanding. For example, where appropriate, citizen science should be embraced with new technologies developed to safeguard reliability and quality.
- Urgent action at international and national scale to ensure open access climate data for all – There are crucial gaps in access, important for both observation and modelling, are not only causing known biases, errors and assumptions but is also holding back scientific capability from progressing and innovating at the frontiers of climate science in specific regions of the world, particularly in Asia and Africa.
- Transforming climate data into information relevant for decision making – The modelling and observation communities need to establish information and format requirements from climate data users and implement standardisation of data formatting, vocabulary, uncertainty and data processing traceability throughout the data chain; from raw to product, using consistent and standardised recording methods within the metadata.
- Building and sustaining climate data records – Action is required to sustain maintenance and evolution of, established, harmonised in-situ, earth observation and reanalysis datasets with open access to ensure maximum impact and global equity. New Essential Climate Variables are required for urban and ocean modelling which will help support and inform decision making on adaptation to climate change in urban and coastal environments.
Citation
O’Rourke, E. and Turner, B. 2022: World Café report to organisers.
Drop-in session reports
Forcings drop-in session
This report provides a summary of the first CMIP Forcings drop-in sessions held on 7 June 2023 across two timeslots (05:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC) to support equitable global participation. These sessions aimed to facilitate community discussion on the development and use of forcing datasets. Each session was chaired by one of the CMIP Panel Co-chairs, John Dunne (GFDL/NOAA) and Helene Hewitt (Met Office) and led by the Forcings Task Team co-leads, Paul Durack (PCMDI/LLNL) and Vaishali Naik (GFDL/NOAA), with input from the wider members of the task team. Participants were introduced to the task team’s members and stakeholders together with the core goals they are seeking to address. Further, feedback received in the recent Future CMIP Forcings Community Survey was outlined and how the task team is addressing issues raised here, to deliver to CMIP7 and tackle longer term scientific challenges, before opening the session for an interactive dialogue with participants.
Citation
O’Rourke, E., Dingley, B., Durack, P.J., Naik, V., Aubry, T., Chini, L., Fasullo, J., Fiedler, S., Funke, B., Graven, H., Hegglin, M., Lurton, T., MacIntosh, C., Nicholls, Z., Plummer, D., Riahi, K., Smith, S., van Marle, M., and Ziehn, T. (2023) CMIP drop in session reports: Forcings (July 2023). doi:10.5281/zenodo.8046147.
Variables drop-in session
A series of regular drop-in sessions was launched in early 2023, facilitated by the CMIP International Project Office (CMIP IPO), to cover key aspects of CMIP7 design and development and promote community feedback to the CMIP governance and Task Teams.
This report provides a summary of the first CMIP Variables drop-in sessions held on 1 June 2023 and 8 June 2023 across two timeslots (16:00 UTC and 05:00 UTC respectively) to support equitable global participation. Each session was chaired by either CMIP Panel co-chair John Dunne (1st June) or CMIP Panel member Julie Arblaster (8th June) and led by one of the Data Request Task Team co-leads, Martin Juckes (CEDA/STFC, UK) or Chloe Mackallah (CSIRO, AU). During the sessions, attendees were asked to provide feedback on their evolving variable needs (in terms of complexity, volume, and timing) with respect to increasingly complex models. There were also discussions on meeting the demands of downstream users, and the capacity of models and workflows to support those needs.
These sessions aimed to facilitate community discussion on variable requirements as planning for CMIP7 gets underway.
Citation
Dingley, B., O’Rourke, E., Turner, B., Juckes, M., Mackallah, C., Anstey, J., Braschi, L., Bretonnier., P. A., Cofiño, A. S., Kim, H., Koven, C., Liang, H.-S., Lovato, T., Moine, M.-P., Narayanasetti, S., Pamment, A., Rigoudy, G., Schupfner, M., Bergman, T. and Zimmerman, K. (2023) CMIP drop in session reports: Variables (August 2023). doi:10.5281/zenodo.8228368.
