IPCC Fourth Assessment Coupled Climate Model Output

Model output data generated for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 4th Assessment Report, now known as the WCRP CMIP3 multi-model database. The archive contains subsets of output from 23 coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation models, including BCC-CM1, CCSM3, and UKMO-HadCM3, across scenarios like 1%/year CO2 increase, 20th Century climate, and SRES A2. The Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) archives the data, which is hosted on the Earth System Grid portal.

Use Cases

• Comparing model performance across 23 models like CCSM3 and UKMO-HadCM3 under the 'Climate of the 20th Century' scenario.
• Analyzing projected climate variables under different CO2 concentration pathways such as the '1%/year CO2 increase (to quadrupling)' scenario.
• Benchmarking new model outputs against archived data from pre-industrial control ('picntrl') and present-day control ('pdcntrl') simulations.
• Studying the physical climate system using the subset of variables archived by PCMDI, which focus on atmosphere, land surface, ocean, and sea ice.

Strengths

• Includes output from 23 distinct climate models from international research centers.
• Provides data across 12 standardized climate scenarios, including SRES projections and control runs.

Limitations

• The data is a subset of each model's full output, limiting the available variables.
• The temporal coverage and specific variable details are not provided in the description.
• The dataset is historical, supporting the 4th Assessment Report, and may not include recent model versions.

Provenance

Source

Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) archive.

Collection Method

Subsets of output from coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation models were archived at the request of the JSC/CLIVAR Working Group on Coupled Modeling.

Time Range

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Freshness

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Geography

Global coverage from coupled climate models.