At the end of 2008, the WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modeling (WGCM) launched an initiative to promote a new set of coordinated climate model experiments, involving major climate modeling groups from around the world. These experiments comprise the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5).

CMIP5 provides a multi-model context to investigate the mechanisms that are responsible for climate variability and change. It also assesses the model differences in poorly understood feedbacks, such as those associated with the carbon cycle and clouds. It additionally tests the model’s ability to predict climate on decadal time scales, and, more generally, it provides coordinated multi-model climate projections investigating the climate change signal and its impacts for a relatively near-term (few decades) and the distant (next century) future.

Table1: summary of CMCC contribution to CMIP5 set of experiments

CMCC supported the set of simulations required by CMIP5 with a series of experiments performed through its specific climate model, implemented in several configurations. Specifically, CMCC has performed the simulations described in the Table 1 – among which the pre-industrial and 20th century ones– applying the climate model at different horizontal and vertical resolutions. Besides these long-term climate scenario simulations, CMCC has also performed the short-term projections (decadal prediction experiments), with the high-resolution version of the CMCC climate model (CMCC-CM).

Furthermore, CMCC has supported the experiments aimed at assessing the carbon cycle feedbacks with a set of integrations performed with its Earth system model (CMCC-CESM).

References:
Scoccimarro E., Gualdi S., Bellucci A., Sanna A., Fogli P. G. , Manzini E., Vichi M., Oddo P., Navarra A. Effects of Tropical Cyclones on Ocean Heat Transport in a High Resolution Coupled General Circulation Model, 2011, Journal of Climate, 24, 4368-4384, DOI: 10.1175/2011JCLI4104.1