Advanced Prediction in Polar regions and beyond: Modelling, observing system design and LInkages associated with ArctiC ClimATE change
Published July 30, 2020 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) v2.0 – an extended set of large-scale diagnostics for quasi-operational and comprehensive evaluation of Earth system models in CMIP

Creators

  • 1. Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany
  • 2. Netherlands eScience Center, Science Park 140, 1098 XG Amsterdam, the Netherlands
  • 3. Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISAC-CNR), Turin, Italy
  • 4. Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona, Spain
  • 5. Department of Biogeochemical Integration, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany
  • 6. Agenzia nazionale per le nuove tecnologie, l'energia e lo sviluppo economico sostenibile (ENEA), Rome, Italy
  • 7. ETH Zurich, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 8. Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), Plymouth, UK
  • 9. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO, USA
  • 10. Rossby Centre, Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), Norrköping, Sweden
  • 11. Met Office, Exeter, UK
  • 12. Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum, Hamburg, Germany
  • 13. University of Bremen, Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP), Bremen, Germany
  • 14. Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
  • 15. Institute of Coastal Research, Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht (HZG), Geesthacht, Germany
  • 16. Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Bremerhaven, Germany
  • 17. CEN, University of Hamburg, Meteorological Institute, Hamburg, Germany
  • 18. Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC), Bologna, Italy
  • 19. Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth and Climate Research, Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
  • 20. Ludwig Maximilians Universität (LMU), Department of Geography, Munich, Germany
  • 21. NCAS Computational Modelling Services (CMS), University of Reading, Reading, UK
  • 22. Institute of Marine Sciences, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISMAR-CNR), Rome, Italy
  • 23. Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, UK

Description

The Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) is a community diagnostics and performance metrics tool designed to improve comprehensive and routine evaluation of Earth system models (ESMs) participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). It has undergone rapid development since the first release in 2016 and is now a well-tested tool that provides end-to-end provenance tracking to ensure reproducibility. It consists of (1) an easy-to-install, well-documented Python package providing the core functionalities (ESMValCore) that performs common preprocessing operations and (2) a diagnostic part that includes tailored diagnostics and performance metrics for specific scientific applications. Here we describe large-scale diagnostics of the second major release of the tool that supports the evaluation of ESMs participating in CMIP Phase 6 (CMIP6). ESMValTool v2.0 includes a large collection of diagnostics and performance metrics for atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial variables for the mean state, trends, and variability. ESMValTool v2.0 also successfully reproduces figures from the evaluation and projections chapters of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) and incorporates updates from targeted analysis packages, such as the NCAR Climate Variability Diagnostics Package for the evaluation of modes of variability, the Thermodynamic Diagnostic Tool (TheDiaTo) to evaluate the energetics of the climate system, as well as parts of AutoAssess that contains a mix of top–down performance metrics. The tool has been fully integrated into the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) infrastructure at the Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum (DKRZ) to provide evaluation results from CMIP6 model simulations shortly after the output is published to the CMIP archive. A result browser has been implemented that enables advanced monitoring of the evaluation results by a broad user community at much faster timescales than what was possible in CMIP5.

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Additional details

Funding

APPLICATE – Advanced Prediction in Polar regions and beyond: Modelling, observing system design and LInkages associated with ArctiC ClimATE change 727862
European Commission