Regionally aggregated, stitched and de-drifted CMIP-climate data, processed with netCDF-SCM v2.0.0

The world’s most complex climate models are currently running a range of experiments as part of the Sixth Coupled Model
Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). Added to the output from the Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), the
total data volume will be in the order of 20PB. Here we present a dataset of annual, monthly, global-, hemispheric- and land/ocean means derived from a selection of experiments of key interest to climate data analysts and reduced complexity climate modellers.

The derived dataset is a key part of validating, calibrating and developing simple climate models against the behaviour of physically complete models. In addition to its use for simple climate modellers, we aim to make our data accessible to other research communities. We facilitate this in a number of ways. Firstly, given the focus on annual, monthly, global-, hemispheric- and land/ocean mean quantities, our dataset is orders of magnitude smaller than the source data and hence does not require specialised ‘big data’ expertise. Secondly, again because of its smaller size, we are able to offer our dataset in a text-based format, greatly reducing the computational expertise required to work with CMIP output. Thirdly, we enable data provenance and integrity control by tracking all source metadata and providing tools which check whether a dataset has been retracted, i.e. identified as erroneous. The resulting dataset is updated as new CMIP6 results become available and we provide a stable access point to allow automated downloads. Along with our accompanying website (cmip6.science.unimelb.edu.au), we believe this dataset provides a unique community resource, as well as allowing non-specialists to access CMIP data in a new, user-friendly way.