WP9 (JRA2): Earth System Model Evaluation developments

WP9/JRA2 aims at further developing the Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool). The ESMValTool is a community-development that aims at facilitating model evaluation within CMIP and at individual modelling centres. It consists of a backend that performs common pre-processing operations such as extraction, reformatting, regridding, and masking of the input data and a diagnostic part that includes tailored diagnostics and performance metrics for specific scientific applications. The ESMValTool is developed in several projects which have enhanced synergies in this important research area in Europe. However, these projects focus mainly on enhancements of the diagnostic part. Although some technical developments are covered that we will build on, a focused infrastructural effort is required to enhance the capability of the tool. The objectives of WP9/JRA2 are:

Improving ESMValTool technically: IS-ENES3 will devote a significant effort to further develop the tool so that it can efficiently handle the large amount of data expected in CMIP6 and in future phases of CMIP together with the observational data required for model evaluation while ensuring efficiency, provenance, automated testing, and proper documentation.

Extending ESMValTool features to attract users: IS-ENES3 will also further advance the tool in terms of its applicability towards a seamless evaluation tool that can be consistently applied to output from global and regional climate models (RCMs) and across timescales. Furthermore, the tool will be adapted to enhance the coupling of externally developed new diagnostics via common standard interfaces and will enhance the application for model development also for irregular grids. Developments will also allow calculations by user demands.

Coupling of ESMValTool to other infrastructures: One of the key points, when developing a community tool, is to foster its adaptation to other existing community infrastructures, such as ESGF. This task will ensure that the ESMValTool can be run efficiently alongside the ESGF infrastructure at selected nodes in order to ensure a stable service in WP7/VA2 Data.