IPCC AR5 Hamburg

The model simulations for the fifth IPCC Report have been successfully completed by scientists from Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) and the Data Management department of the German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ). In this Assessment Report No 5 (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC (see also www.ipcc.ch), the actual knowledge on the state and the change of climate is integrated. The coordinated climate model experiments underlying the IPCC-AR5 were designed as experiments of CMIP5 („Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5“).

The simulations realized with a new climate model developed at MPI-M can be characterized as follows (CMIP5 experiment description:Taylor et al., 2012) :

• Reconstruction of an “undisturbed” pre-industrial climate: piControl

• Climate change experiments forced with observed atmospheric greenhouse gas and aerosol concentrations since the middle of the 19th century: historical

• Projections of future climate change on long-term (out to 2100 and beyond): Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs)

• CO2 sensitivity experiments: 1pctCO2 (1% per year CO2), abrupt4xCO2 (instantaneous quadrupling of CO2)

• Experiment groups for specific scientific research of e.g. the paleoclimate (lgm, midHolocene, past1000), the atmospheric feedbacks (amip,sstClim**), aqua-planets (aqua*) and realistic planets with idealized forcings

• Decadal experimentsare initialized from observed states of the climate system to explore climate predictability and prediction on decadal to multidecadal time scales. Note that decadal predictions with climate models are in an exploratory stage: decadal*, noVolc**

All simulations were done on the HLRE - the High Performance Computing System for Earth System Research - at DKRZ.

Find Data

The model output is stored in a relational database and is available to scientists for analysis. The data are available from CERA. A step-by-step data download guide is provided at https://cera-www.dkrz.de/WDCC/ui/cerasearch/info?site=IPCC-DDC-AR5-data. You can find the data access under:

• CMIP5 experiments

• CMIP5 decadal experiments

• Access to all experiments (including MPI-M simulations) is also possible via the Earth System Grid at esgf-data.dkrz.de or via WDCC / IPCC-DDC at https://cera-www.dkrz.de/WDCC/ui/cerasearch/q?general_key_ss=IPCC-DDC

• The MPI-M model output data is archived at:https://cera-www.dkrz.de/WDCC/ui/cerasearch/entry?acronym=DKRZ_LTA_555_ds00003

Further details:

• CMIP5 consortia run project at DKRZ

• Visualization of MPI-M results

• Available output variables for MPI-M results

• Tools and software for data analysis

• MPI-M publications in a special issue of the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (JAMES)

• CMIP5 project page

• NetCDF/CF data format

• IPCC-DDC AR5 and Fact Sheet CMIP5 data provided at the IPCC Data Distribution Centre (Published September 2016) [local copy]

MPI-M press release (2013):

“With its analysis of the current climate status and the observed changes, the new report corroborates and specifies the findings of the previous report from 2007. The mean temperature of the atmosphere and the ocean has increased further, the melting of glaciers and the thawing of permafrost soils continues, as does the mass loss from the large ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. In contrast to the previous report, the analysis now takes dynamic changes of the ice sheets into account. The report also finds that the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases has increased further in recent years.” (source:MPI-M (2013): New IPCC Assessment Report: Improved models, more accurate statements*) *

Publications:

• Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (JAMES). Special Issue: The Max Planck Institute for Meteorology Earth System Model. 2013-12-01. http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/issue/10.1002/(ISSN)1942-2466.MPIESM1/