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

• Published in: Geoscientific Model Development
• Main Authors: Eyring, Veronika, Bock, Lisa, Lauer, Axel, Righi, Mattia, Schlund, Manuel, Andela, Bouwe, Arnone, Enrico, Bellprat, Omar, Brötz, Björn, Caron, Louis-Philippe, Carvalhais, Nuno, Cionni, Irene, Cortesi, Nicola, Crezee, Bas, Davin, Edouard L., Davini, Paolo, Debeire, Kevin, Mora, Lee, de, Deser, Clara, Docquier, David, Earnshaw, Paul, Ehbrecht, Carsten, Gier, Bettina K., Gonzalez-Reviriego, Nube, Goodman, Paul, Hagemann, Stefan, Hardiman, Steven, Hassler, Birgit, Hunter, Alasdair, Kadow, Christopher, Kindermann, Stephan, Koirala, Sujan, Koldunov, Nikolay, Lejeune, Quentin, Lembo, Valerio, Lovato, Tomas, Lucarini, Valerio, Massonnet, François, Müller, Benjamin, Pandde, Amarjiit, Pérez-Zanón, Núria, Phillips, Adam, Predoi, Valeriu, Russell, Joellen, Sellar, Alistair, Serva, Federico, Stacke, Tobias, Swaminathan, Ranjini, Torralba, Verónica, Vegas-Regidor, Javier, Hardenberg, Jost, von, Weigel, Katja, Zimmermann, Klaus
• Other Authors: Barcelona Supercomputing Center
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2020
• Subjects: Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Desenvolupament humà i sostenible::Degradació ambiental::Canvi climàtic; Climatic changes; Greenhouse gases; Earth systems data and models; ESMValTool; Earth system models (ESMs); Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP); Model simulations; Warming; Climate models; Canvis climàtics; Gasos d'efecte hivernacle; Escalfament global > Models matemàtics; Simulacio per ordinador; Arctic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2117/328212; https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-3383-2020

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. This research has been supported by Horizon 2020 (grant nos. 641816, 727862, 641727, and 824084), the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) (Metrics and Access to Global Indices for Climate Projections, MAGIC), the Helmholtz Association (Advanced Earth System Model Evaluation for CMIP, EVal4CMIP), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (grant no. 274762653), the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (grant no. CMIP6-DICAD), and the European Space Agency (ESA Climate Change Initiative Climate Model User Group, ESA CCI CMUG). Peer Reviewed Postprint (published version)