ESMValTool

Under the lead of DLR-IPA, the Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) is developed by an international consortium with more than 70 institutions. The goal of this internationally well-recognized effort is to improve comprehensive and routine evaluation of Earth System models with observations and to provide more reliable climate projections.

The ESMValTool is a community diagnostics and performance metrics tool designed to improve comprehensive and routine evaluation of Earth System Models. It has undergone rapid development since its first release in 2016 and is now a well-tested tool that provides end-to-end provenance tracking to ensure reproducibility of the results. It consists of an easy-to-install, well documented Python package providing the core functionalities performing common pre-processing operations and a diagnostic part that includes diagnostics and performance metrics tailored for specific scientific applications. The latest version of the ESMValTool (v2.0) includes a large collection of diagnostics for atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial variables for the mean state, trends, and variability, as well as emergent constraints and diagnostics for extreme events.

The tool is currently used to support the upcoming IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and has been fully integrated into the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) infrastructure at the Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum (DKRZ) to provide evaluation results from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) model simulations shortly after the output is published to the ESGF. The goal is to continue to support the evaluation and analysis of CMIP and national modelling efforts.

Schematic diagram of the workflow for routinely producing a broad characterization of model performance for Coupled Model Intercomparison Project model output using community evaluation tools such as the ESMValTool that utilize relevant observations and reanalyses and rely on the Earth System Grid Federation infrastructure.

Publications:

Eyring, V., Bock, L., Lauer, A., Righi, M., Schlund, M., Andela, B., Arnone, E., Bellprat, O., Brötz, B., Caron, L.-P., Carvalhais, N., Cionni, I., Cortesi, N., Crezee, B., Davin, E., Davini, P., Debeire, K., de Mora, L., Deser, C., Docquier, D., Earnshaw, P., Ehbrecht, C., Gier, B. K., Gonzalez-Reviriego, N., Goodman, P., Hagemann, S., Hardiman, S., Hassler, B., Hunter, A., Kadow, C., Kindermann, S., Koirala, S., Koldunov, N. V., Lejeune, Q., Lembo, V., Lovato, T., Lucarini, V., Massonnet, F., Müller, B., Pandde, A., Pérez-Zanón, N., Phillips, A., Predoi, V., Russell, J., Sellar, A., Serva, F., Stacke, T., Swaminathan, R., Torralba, V., Vegas-Regidor, J., von Hardenberg, J., Weigel, K., and Zimmermann, K.: 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, Geosci. Model Dev., 13, 3383-3438, doi: 10.5194/gmd-13-3383-2020, 2020.

Lauer, A., Eyring, V., Bellprat, O., Bock, L., Gier, B. K., Hunter, A., Lorenz, R., Pérez-Zanón, N., Righi, M., Schlund, M., Senftleben, D., Weigel, K., and Zechlau, S.: Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) v2.0 – diagnostics for emergent constraints and future projections from Earth system models in CMIP, Geosci. Model Dev. (accepted).

Righi, M., Andela, B., Eyring, V., Lauer, A., Predoi, V., Schlund, M., Vegas-Regidor, J., Bock, L., Brötz, B., de Mora, L., Diblen, F., Dreyer, L., Drost, N., Earnshaw, P., Hassler, B., Koldunov, N., Little, B., Loosveldt Tomas, S., and Zimmermann, K.: Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) v2.0 – technical overview, Geosci. Model Dev., 13, 1179–1199, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-1179-2020, 2020.

Weigel et al.: ESMValTool (v2.0) - Diagnostics for extreme events, regional model and impact evaluation and analysis of Earth system models in CMIP, submitted (Geosci. Model Dev.).

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