ESMValTool

The Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) is a community diagnostics and performance metrics tool for the evaluation of Earth System Models (ESMs) that allows for routine comparison of single or multiple models, either against predecessor versions or against observations. Specific scientific themes include, for instance, selected Essential Climate Variables (ECVs), a range of known systematic biases common to ESMs, such as coupled tropical climate variability, monsoons, Southern Ocean processes, continental dry biases and soil hydrology-climate interactions, surface water and energy fluxes as well as atmospheric CO2 budgets, tropospheric and stratospheric ozone, and tropospheric aerosols. The tool is being developed in such a way that additional analyses can easily be added. A set of standard namelists for each scientific topic reproduces specific sets of diagnostics or performance metrics that have demonstrated their importance in ESM evaluation in the peer-reviewed literature. The ESMValTool is a community effort open to both users and developers encouraging open exchange of diagnostic source code and evaluation results. This will facilitate and improve ESM evaluation beyond the state-of-the-art and aims at supporting such activities within the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Project CRESCENDO and at individual modeling centers.

The main reference paper for the ESMValTool is:

Eyring, V., Righi, M., Lauer, A., Evaldsson, M., Wenzel, S., Jones, C., Anav, A., Andrews, O., Cionni, I., Davin, E. L., Deser, C., Ehbrecht, C., Friedlingstein, P., Gleckler, P., Gottschaldt, K.-D., Hagemann, S., Juckes, M., Kindermann, S., Krasting, J., Kunert, D., Levine, R., Loew, A., Mäkelä, J., Martin, G., Mason, E., Phillips, A. S., Read, S., Rio, C., Roehrig, R., Senftleben, D., Sterl, A., van Ulft, L. H., Walton, J., Wang, S., and Williams, K. D.: ESMValTool (v1.0) – a community diagnostic and performance metrics tool for routine evaluation of Earth system models in CMIP, Geosci. Model Dev., 9, 1747-1802, doi: 10.5194/gmd-9-1747-2016, 2016.

The ESMValTool (for users) and the full User’s and Developer’s Guide are available from the ESMValTool website http://www.esmvaltool.org/

The Quick Start Guide ESMValTool for CRESCENDO members is available to download through our Intranet. Alternatively, contact the ESMValTool core development team members for any further information and help.