An evaluation dataset for the skills of CMIP5 and CMIP6 models in simulating climate of China

General circulation model (GCM) simulations archived by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) are crucial tools for climate science. However, with various GCM results simulated by different countries and institutions, researchers have difficulty in choosing appropriate models for their unique study area. To this end, this dataset provieds Tayler skill scores of 28 GCMs in simulating temperature and precipitation of 631 reference sites across China under daily, monthly and seasonally scales. These scores are calculated based on the observations of meteorological stations and historical simulations of GCMs during 1970-2005. The dataset is very important for researchers to select locally appropriate GCMs. For example, researchers concerned with climate change of Beijing could firstly download the GCMs with sound performance at station 54511 (i.e., NorESM2-LM, INM-CM5-0 and MPI-ESM1-2-LR for temperature and NorESM1-M, IPSL-CM5A-LR and INM-CM4 for precipitation), and then conduct the further works of downscaling.