Data Distribution Centre

News! We are currently developing a new website. To visit these pages, click here

Help Site map

AR5 GCM data

Climate model results provide the basis for important components of IPCC assessments, including the understanding of climate change and the projections of future climate change and related impacts. The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) relies heavily on the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 5 (CMIP5), a collaborative climate modelling process coordinated by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP).

The CMIP5 archive has evolved through and beyond the IPCC 5th Assessment process, with modelling groups eager to contribute their best available data to the research community. The IPCC DDC provides access to two snapshots of the CMIP5 archive in the World Data Center Climate (WDCC):

The IPCC WGI snapshot was collected at ETH Zurich to support the IPCC WGI AR5 assessment process, including the production of CMIP5-based figures in the WGI AR5 report. This dataset is a subset of the data in the CMIP5 archive on March 15, 2013 (the cutoff date for literature to be included in the WGI AR5 report). A selected subset of this data can be ordered on storage media, details are given here.

The DDC Reference snapshot was collected by the World Data Center Climate (WDCC) at the DKRZ in Germany, the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) in the UK and the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) University of California in the US. The DDC Reference snapshot is more extensive than the WGI snapshot: It contains data that was discussed in the scientific literature and thus contributed indirectly to the IPCC 5th Assessment Report. The reference snapshot is also based on the status of the CMIP5 data archive as of March 15, 2013.1

The Fact Sheet on CMIP5 data provided at the IPCC Data Distribution Centre gives additional information on these two data snapshots. CMIP5 data provided at the IPCC Data Distribution Centre (Published September 2016) CMIP5 data provided through the IPCC DDC has undergone a quality control procedure. To find individual information on data, data creation and data quality for an experiment, please follow the links in the tables on the two data access pages above.

As noted above, the CMIP5 archive is evolving and in some cases the data used in the IPCC 5th Assessment Report may have been superseded. Latest versions for all experiments are available in the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) at https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/mips/cmip5/data-portal.html. For corrections of data sets published under later versions please look at the errata page hosted by PCMDI.

Further information on CMIP5 can be found on this page, including:


CMIP5 Data License Statement

These data were first published under the license of CMIP5. Terms of use for CMIP5 are applied for DDC-AR5 data. They are provided at https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/mips/cmip5/terms-of-use.html. Data from some modelling centres are licensed for use in non-commercial research and for educational purposes, other for unrestricted use. Please refer to the terms of use for the CMIP5 modeling groups for details.
DDC-AR5 data should be cited by its DataCite DOI and according to the citation recommendation of CMIP5.

 

 

Acknowledgements:

The World Data Center for Climate (WDCC) acknowledges the international modeling groups for providing their data for analysis, the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) for collecting and distributing the model data, the JSC/CLIVAR Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) and their Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) and Climate Simulation Panel for organizing the model data analysis activity, and the IPCC WG1 TSU for technical support.

This work, including access to the data and technical assistance, is provided by the German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ), with funding from the Federal Ministry for Education and Research.

1 Please note that the full CMIP5 data archive continues to be updated with new results, corrections etc. in contrast to the two archives available from the DDC.