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

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.

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Related Software #1 : ESMValTool

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Related Software #3 : ESMValCore
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Author 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
de Mora, Lee
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
von Hardenberg, Jost
Weigel, Katja
Zimmermann, Klaus
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2020-07-30T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
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Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2023-08-18T18:31:56.719627
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:23573
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation 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, de Mora, Lee, 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, von Hardenberg, Jost, Weigel, Katja, Zimmermann, Klaus. (2020). 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. UCAR/NCAR - Library. http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7h41vq9. Accessed 18 March 2025.

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