CMIP6: CDS overview text

This catalogue entry provides daily and monthly climate projections on single levels from a large number of experiments, models, members and time periods computed in the framework of sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6).

CMIP6 data are going to be used extensively in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment Report. The use of these data is mostly aimed at:

• addressing outstanding scientific questions that arose as part of the IPCC reporting process;
• improving the understanding of the climate system;
• providing estimates of future climate change and related uncertainties;
• providing input data for the adaptation to the climate change;
• examining climate predictability and exploring the ability of models to predict climate on decadal time scales;
• evaluating how realistic the different models are in simulating the recent past.

The term "experiments" refers to the three main categories of CMIP5 simulations:

• Historical experiments which cover the period where modern climate observations exist. These experiments show how the GCMs performs for the past climate and can be used as a reference period for comparison with scenario runs for the future. The period covered is typically 1850-2005.
• Ensemble of climate projection experiments following the combined pathways of Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) and Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP). The SSP scenarios provide different pathways of the future climate forcing. The period covered is typically 2006-2100, some extended RCP experimental data is available from 2100-2300.

In CMIP6, the same experiments were run using different GCMs. In addition, for each model, the same experiment was repeatedly done using slightly different conditions (like initial conditions or different physical parameterisations for instance) producing in that way an ensemble of experiments closely related. 

The data are produced by the participating institutes of the CMIP6 project.