Climate Model Documentation

Co-leads: David Hassell, NCAS and Guillaume Levavasseur, IPSL

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This task team will focus on designing a strategy for documenting the CMIP7 workflow (from experimental design all the way to data analysis) that satisfies the needs of both data creators and data users.

Model intercomparison projects are essentially about designing experiments with specific requirements. They involve groups running simulations which conform to the requirements, and which produce data that can be compared with both other simulation data and observations. Interpreting the data depends on understanding the details of the models used and how they conform to the experimental requirements. This process depends on a well-constructed documentation provision so that the models can be easily configured, and their data outputs easily compared.

Challenge

Historically (pre-CMIP5) , the lack of comprehensive, single-source documentation meant that model providers and data users were required to infer information from the published record, as well as personal contacts, websites and internal documents – a process that could not always guarantee results, To remedy this, and to cope with the increasing complexity of the CMIP project design, the creation of centralised CMIP documentation was undertaken during the fifth and sixth phases under the banner of ES-DOC (Earth System Documentation), but with mixed results.

Aim & Objectives

The aim of this TT is to devise a practical and sustainable documentation strategy for CMIP7.

Early objectives will be:

Define the CMIP7 stakeholder use cases that will inform the documentation requirements for CMIP7:
- Compile examples of the scientific questions which CMIP7 stakeholders require to be answerable via ES-DOC.
- Consider which types of documentation (e.g., experiment definitions, model formulations, etc.) should be collected.
- Consider the depths of detail that need to be collected for each documentation type.
Assess how the CMIP6 infrastructure that is used to create and view documentation should be adapted for CMIP7.
Create a realistic CMIP7 timeline for the completion of documentation tasks by the modelling groups and infrastructure providers.

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