ESMValTool (v1.0) – a community diagnostic and performance metrics tool for  routine evaluation of Earth system models in CMIP

Eyring, Veronika; Righi, Mattia; Lauer, Axel; Evaldsson, Martin; Wenzel, Sabrina; Jones, Colin; Anav, Alessandro; Andrews, Oliver; Cionni, Irene; Davin, Edouard L.; Deser, Clara; Ehbrecht, Carsten; Friedlingstein, Pierre; Gleckler, P. J.; Gottschaldt, Klaus-Dirk; Hagemann, Stefan; Juckes, Martin; Kindermann, Stephan; Krasting, John P.; Kunert, Dominik; Levine, Richard C.; Loew, Alexander; Mäkelä, Jarmo; Martin, Gill; Mason, Erik; Phillips, Adam S.; Read, Simon; Rio, Catherine; Roehrig, Romain; Senftleben, Daniel; Sterl, Andreas; Ulft, L. H. van; Walton, Jeremy; Wang, S.; Williams, Keith D.

doi:10.5194/gmd-9-1747-2016

Cited by 152 publications

(120 citation statements)

References 175 publications

(188 reference statements)

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“…This version will be available from the ESMValTool webpage at http://www.esmvaltool.org/ and from github (https://github.com/ ESMValTool-Core/ESMValTool). Users who apply the software resulting in presentations or papers are kindly asked to cite the ESMValTool documentation paper (Eyring et al, 2016b) along with the software DOI (https://doi.org/10.17874/ac8548f0315) and version number. The climate community is encouraged to contribute to this effort and to join the ESMValTool development team for the contribution of additional diagnostics for ESM evaluation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The community model evaluation and performance metrics Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool; Eyring et al, 2016b) is used to evaluate a range of variables and climate processes in the models that have been updated during EMBRACE ("EMBRACE models") against observations and their CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5; Taylor et al, 2012) predecessor versions ("CMIP5 models"). The study has a particular focus on evaluating processes relevant to clouds and precipitation and aims at assessing the progress that has been made by model improvements introduced during the development and preparation of the models for the sixth phase of CMIP (CMIP6; Eyring et al, 2016a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Process-level improvements in CMIP5 models and their impact on tropical variability, the Southern Ocean, and monsoons

et al. 2018

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Abstract. The performance of updated versions of the four earth system models (ESMs) CNRM, EC-Earth, HadGEM, and MPI-ESM is assessed in comparison to their predecessor versions used in Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. The Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) is applied to evaluate selected climate phenomena in the models against observations. This is the first systematic application of the ESMValTool to assess and document the progress made during an extensive model development and improvement project. This study focuses on the South Asian monsoon (SAM) and the West African monsoon (WAM), the coupled equatorial climate, and Southern Ocean clouds and radiation, which are known to exhibit systematic biases in present-day ESMs.The analysis shows that the tropical precipitation in three out of four models is clearly improved. Two of three updated coupled models show an improved representation of tropical sea surface temperatures with one coupled model not exhibiting a double Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Simulated cloud amounts and cloudradiation interactions are improved over the Southern Ocean. Improvements are also seen in the simulation of the SAM and WAM, although systematic biases remain in regional details and the timing of monsoon rainfall. Analysis of simulations with EC-Earth at different horizontal resolutions from T159 up to T1279 shows that the synoptic-scale variability in precipitation over the SAM and WAM regions improves with higher model resolution. The results suggest that the reasonably good agreement of modeled and observed mean WAM and SAM rainfall in lower-resolution models may be a result of unrealistic intensity distributions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Process-level improvements in CMIP5 models and their impact on tropical variability, the Southern Ocean, and monsoons

et al. 2018

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“…These efforts utilize observations served by the ESGF contributed from the obs4MIPs Teixeira et al, 2014) and ana4MIPs projects. Examples of available tools that target routine evaluation in CMIP include the PCMDI metrics software and the Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool, Eyring et al, 2016), which brings together established diagnostics such as those used in the evaluation chapter of IPCC AR5 (Flato et al, 2013). The ESMValTool also integrates other packages, such as the NCAR Climate Variability Diagnostics Package (Phillips et al, 2014), or diagnostics such as the cloud regime metric (Williams and Webb, 2009) developed by the Cloud Feedback MIP (CFMIP) community.…”

Section: Common Standards Infrastructure and Documentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overview of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) experimental design and organization

et al. 2016

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Abstract. By coordinating the design and distribution of global climate model simulations of the past, current, and future climate, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) has become one of the foundational elements of climate science. However, the need to address an everexpanding range of scientific questions arising from more and more research communities has made it necessary to revise the organization of CMIP. After a long and wide community consultation, a new and more federated structure has been put in place. It consists of three major elements: (1) a handful of common experiments, the DECK (Diagnostic, Evaluation and Characterization of Klima) and CMIP historical simulations (1850-near present) that will maintain continuity and help document basic characteristics of models across different phases of CMIP; (2) common standards, coordination, infrastructure, and documentation that will facilitate the distribution of model outputs and the characterization of the model ensemble; and (3) an ensemble of CMIPEndorsed Model Intercomparison Projects (MIPs) that will be specific to a particular phase of CMIP (now CMIP6) and that will build on the DECK and CMIP historical simulations to address a large range of specific questions and fill the scientific gaps of the previous CMIP phases. The DECK and CMIP historical simulations, together with the use of CMIP data standards, will be the entry cards for models participating in CMIP. Participation in CMIP6-Endorsed MIPs by individual modelling groups will be at their own discretion and will depend on their scientific interests and priorities. With

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“…2; BRIDGE models highlighted in red). Here we make use of the ESMValTool(v1.0), a community diagnostic and performance tool (Eyring et al, 2016b) to assess and compare the magnitude of known systematic biases inherent in all climate models. Better understanding of these biases is instrumental in diagnosing their origin and a model's ability to reproduce observed spatial and temporal variability and trends in various atmospheric (e.g.…”

Section: Comparison With Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

The BRIDGE HadCM3 family of climate models: HadCM3@Bristol v1.0

et al. 2017

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Abstract. Understanding natural and anthropogenic climate change processes involves using computational models that represent the main components of the Earth system: the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, and land surface. These models have become increasingly computationally expensive as resolution is increased and more complex process representations are included. However, to gain robust insight into how climate may respond to a given forcing, and to meaningfully quantify the associated uncertainty, it is often required to use either or both ensemble approaches and very long integrations. For this reason, more computationally efficient models can be very valuable tools. Here we provide a comprehensive overview of the suite of climate models based around the HadCM3 coupled general circulation model. This model was developed at the UK Met Office and has been heavily used during the last 15 years for a range of future (and past) climate change studies, but has now been largely superseded for many scientific studies by more recently developed models. However, it continues to be extensively used by various institutions, including the BRIDGE (Bristol Research Initiative for the Dynamic Global Environment) research group at the University of Bristol, who have made modest adaptations to the base HadCM3 model over time. These adaptations mean that the original documentation is not entirely representative, and several other relatively undocumented configurations are in use. We therefore describe the key features of a number of configurations of the HadCM3 climate model family, which together make up HadCM3@Bristol version 1.0. In order to differentiate variants that have undergone development at BRIDGE, we have introduced the letter B into the model nomenclature. We include descriptions of the atmosphere-only model (HadAM3B), the coupled model with a low-resolution ocean (HadCM3BL), the high-resolution atmosphere-only model (HadAM3BH), and the regional model (HadRM3B). These also include three versions of the land surface scheme. By comparing withPublished by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. observational datasets, we show that these models produce a good representation of many aspects of the climate system, including the land and sea surface temperatures, precipitation, ocean circulation, and vegetation. This evaluation, combined with the relatively fast computational speed (up to 1000 times faster than some CMIP6 models), motivates continued development and scientific use of the HadCM3B family of coupled climate models, predominantly for quantifying uncertainty and for long multi-millennial-scale simulations.

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ESMValTool (v1.0) – a community diagnostic and performance metrics tool for routine evaluation of Earth system models in CMIP

Cited by 152 publications

References 175 publications

Process-level improvements in CMIP5 models and their impact on tropical variability, the Southern Ocean, and monsoons

Process-level improvements in CMIP5 models and their impact on tropical variability, the Southern Ocean, and monsoons

Overview of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) experimental design and organization

The BRIDGE HadCM3 family of climate models: HadCM3@Bristol v1.0

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