MIP Controlled Vocabularies Task Team

Co-leads: Karl Taylor, PCMDI at LLNL  and Laurent Troussellier, IPSL

The primary purpose of the Model Intercomparison Project (MIP) Controlled Vocabularies (CVs) task team is to develop, design and implement an improved framework for recording and managing vocabularies that can serve CMIP and related WGCM and ESMO activities.

Challenge

Controlled Vocabularies in support of CMIP have evolved through its phases, and as the project has diversified and grown, they have become increasingly essential.  They are used, for example, to uniquely define datasets, record information about participating groups, experiments, and activities, as well as describing certain dataset characteristics, which might be useful in the discovery and interpretation of  datasets of interest..

The CMIP7 CVs will anchor many of the downstream infrastructure services relied on by modelling groups in, for example, generating output conforming to CMIP standards (e.g. CMIP7 “data request”, CMOR  and other data preparation tools) and enabling the ESGF publisher to index and serve the datasets.

Objectives and Deliverables

The key objectives of the MIP Controlled Vocabularies Task Team are to:

• Develop tools to facilitate extraction of CV information by the MIP infrastructure components that rely on it.
• Create a scalable framework for recording, managing, and serving the multiple controlled vocabularies relied on by the MIP infrastructure in support of CMIP and other WCRP MIPs.
• Develop documentation describing CV structure and guidelines for establishing new CVs and updating existing ones.
• Propose a viable approach for managing and maintaining the CVs.

The task team is aiming to deliver:

• CMIP7 CVs and the associated 
  • Documentation of CV structures
  • Approach for CV governance and management
  • Framework
  • Centralization of information (with the CVs serving as the reference source)
  • Model documentation (via the Essential Model Documentation).
  • Rigorous quality control measures of all CV contents.
• CMIP7 update to Taylor et al., 2018 “CMIP6 Global Attributes, DRS, Filenames, Directory Structure and CV’s” (here).
• Guidance for ESGF CMIP7 project on use of CVs and their content and how to avoid inconsistencies between the CVs and ESGF index.
• Proposal for integrating a variable register with the other CVs that
  • Can be used to generate CMOR Tables. 
  • Can serve not only CMIP7, but also CMIP6Plus, obs4MIPs and input4MIPs.

Members

Finalised membership list coming soon, following close of the membership call.

Activities

Membership call

Open call for members was released in December 2024 (closed on 20th January 2025)