The CSIRO-Mk3.6.0 Atmosphere-Ocean GCM: Participation in CMIP5 and data publication

Abstract

The participation of the CSIRO-Mk3.6.0 Atmosphere Ocean Global Climate Model (AOGCM) in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) is a joint initiative between the Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). It now has approximately 10 research and support scientists working on this project which first began in 2009. This on-going project consists of the following four main components:• A model design and testing period to ensure that the model had acceptable configuration for participation in CMIP5, in particular, exhibiting a realistic present-day climate and a stable preindustrial climate;• A model integration phase where CMIP5 experiments were performed. These were to include the so-called "core" experiments plus a number of "tier1" and "tier2" experiments, which will constitute a significant submission to CMIP5 and to address local climate modelling needs and applications;• Post-processing of the raw CSIRO-Mk3.6.0 model output into internationally recognised and standardized CMIP5 form; and • Quality control and publication phase of the CSIRO-Mk3.6.0 data to ensure entry into the Earth System Grid (ESG) Federation, allowing it to be disseminated to the CMIP5 international community. In this paper the four phases of this climate modelling project will be discussed in detail. The main emphasis is to make potentially interested researchers aware of the CSIRO-Mk3.6.0 climate model submission and to elucidate the range and features of the datasets that are now available. The CMIP5 datasets are being hosted on the ESG which consists of international data nodes and gateways, including Australia's own node hosted by the National Computing Infrastructure (NCI) National Facility in Canberra. A key outcome of our efforts is the generation of over 150, mostly high priority, uniquely defined parameters from the list of requested model output to understand climate processes and also produce new climate change projection data for impact assessment. Some preliminary results of the CSIRO-Mk3.6.0 model are presented to illustrate the usefulness of this dataset in this research area.