World Climate Research Programme Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 3 (WCRP CMPI3) multi-model dataset

In response to a proposed activity of the World Climate Research Programme's (WCRP's) Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM), the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) volunteered to collect model output contributed by leading modeling centers around the world. Climate model output from simulations of the past, present and future climate was collected by PCMDI mostly during the years 2005 and 2006, and this archived data constitutes phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3). In part, the WGCM organized this activity to enable those outside the major modeling centers to perform research of relevance to climate scientists preparing the Fourth Asssessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is meant to serve IPCC's Working Group 1, which focuses on the physical climate system -- atmosphere, land surface, ocean and sea ice -- and the choice of variables archived at the PCMDI reflects this focus. The all collection amounts to about 35 Tb of data, the TPAC collection host ab 13 Tb so not all the available scenarios are complete, a full list is available on the portal website .A more comprehensive set of output for a given model may be available from the modeling center that produced it.

Whenever you publish research based on model output from the CMIP3 database, you should include the following acknowledgement:

"We acknowledge the modeling groups, the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) and the WCRP's Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) for their roles in making available the WCRP CMIP3 multi-model dataset. Support of this dataset is provided by the Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy."