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Title: C4MIP – The Coupled Climate–Carbon Cycle Model Intercomparison Project: Experimental protocol for CMIP6

Journal Article · · Geoscientific Model Development (Online)
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [5];  [6];  [9];  [10];  [11];  [5];  [5];  [12];  [9]
  1. Med Office Hadley Centre, Exeter (United Kingdom)
  2. Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Victoria (Canada)
  3. Univ. of Exeter, Exeter (United Kingdom)
  4. Univ. Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
  5. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg (Germany)
  6. NOAA/GFDL, Princeton, NJ (United States)
  7. Imperial College, London (United Kingdom)
  8. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  9. Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena (Germany)
  10. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Kanagawa (Japan)
  11. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  12. Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Coordinated experimental design and implementation has become a cornerstone of global climate modelling. Model Intercomparison Projects (MIPs) enable systematic and robust analysis of results across many models, by reducing the influence of ad hoc differences in model set-up or experimental boundary conditions. As it enters its 6th phase, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) has grown significantly in scope with the design and documentation of individual simulations delegated to individual climate science communities. The Coupled Climate–Carbon Cycle Model Intercomparison Project (C4MIP) takes responsibility for design, documentation, and analysis of carbon cycle feedbacks and interactions in climate simulations. These feedbacks are potentially large and play a leading-order contribution in determining the atmospheric composition in response to human emissions of CO2 and in the setting of emissions targets to stabilize climate or avoid dangerous climate change. For over a decade, C4MIP has coordinated coupled climate–carbon cycle simulations, and in this paper we describe the C4MIP simulations that will be formally part of CMIP6. While the climate–carbon cycle community has created this experimental design, the simulations also fit within the wider CMIP activity, conform to some common standards including documentation and diagnostic requests, and are designed to complement the CMIP core experiments known as the Diagnostic, Evaluation and Characterization of Klima (DECK). C4MIP has three key strands of scientific motivation and the requested simulations are designed to satisfy their needs: (1) pre-industrial and historical simulations (formally part of the common set of CMIP6 experiments) to enable model evaluation, (2) idealized coupled and partially coupled simulations with 1 % per year increases in CO2 to enable diagnosis of feedback strength and its components, (3) future scenario simulations to project how the Earth system will respond to anthropogenic activity over the 21st century and beyond. This paper documents in detail these simulations, explains their rationale and planned analysis, and describes how to set up and run the simulations. Particular attention is paid to boundary conditions, input data, and requested output diagnostics. It is important that modelling groups participating in C4MIP adhere as closely as possible to this experimental design.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725; AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1327771
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1379578
Journal Information:
Geoscientific Model Development (Online), Vol. 9, Issue 8; ISSN 1991-9603
Publisher:
European Geosciences UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 148 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Scenarios towards limiting global mean temperature increase below 1.5 °C journal March 2018
Increased water-use efficiency and reduced CO2 uptake by plants during droughts at a continental scale journal August 2018
Temperature and moisture are minor drivers of regional-scale soil organic carbon dynamics journal April 2019
Observed and modelled historical trends in the water‐use efficiency of plants and ecosystems journal May 2019
Historical changes in the stomatal limitation of photosynthesis: empirical support for an optimality principle journal December 2019
Permafrost thawing puts the frozen carbon at risk over the Tibetan Plateau journal May 2020
C4MIP nitrogen deposition forcing for 1%CO2 simulation version 1.0 dataset January 2019
Carbon–climate feedbacks accelerate ocean acidification journal January 2018
Evaluating the simulated mean soil carbon transit times by Earth system models using observations journal January 2019
ESD Reviews: Climate feedbacks in the Earth system and prospects for their evaluation journal January 2019
Assessing carbon dioxide removal through global and regional ocean alkalinization under high and low emission pathways journal January 2018
Carbon–nitrogen interactions in idealized simulations with JSBACH (version 3.10) journal January 2017
Biogeochemical protocols and diagnostics for the CMIP6 Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (OMIP) journal January 2017
The PMIP4 contribution to CMIP6 – Part 3: The last millennium, scientific objective, and experimental design for the PMIP4 past1000 simulations journal January 2017
Compiled records of carbon isotopes in atmospheric CO 2 for historical simulations in CMIP6 journal January 2017
AerChemMIP: quantifying the effects of chemistry and aerosols in CMIP6 journal January 2017
The PMIP4 contribution to CMIP6 – Part 1: Overview and over-arching analysis plan journal January 2018
The Carbon Dioxide Removal Model Intercomparison Project (CDRMIP): rationale and experimental protocol for CMIP6 journal January 2018
The Polar Amplification Model Intercomparison Project (PAMIP) contribution to CMIP6: investigating the causes and consequences of polar amplification journal January 2019
The Beijing Climate Center Climate System Model (BCC-CSM): the main progress from CMIP5 to CMIP6 journal January 2019
The Zero Emissions Commitment Model Intercomparison Project (ZECMIP) contribution to C4MIP: quantifying committed climate changes following zero carbon emissions journal January 2019
Limitations of the 1 % experiment as the benchmark idealized experiment for carbon cycle intercomparison in C 4 MIP journal January 2019
The CMIP6 Data Request (DREQ, version 01.00.31) journal January 2020
The generation of gridded emissions data for CMIP6 journal January 2020
The Land Use Model Intercomparison Project (LUMIP) contribution to CMIP6: rationale and experimental design journal January 2016
The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) for CMIP6 text January 2016
Temperature and moisture are minor drivers of regional-scale soil organic carbon dynamics text January 2019
The Zero Emissions Commitment Model Intercomparison Project (ZECMIP) contribution to C4MIP: quantifying committed climate changes following zero carbon emissions text January 2019
The PMIP4 contribution to CMIP6 – Part 1: Overview and over-arching analysis plan text January 2018
ESD Reviews: Climate feedbacks in the Earth system and prospects for their evaluation text January 2019
The Polar Amplification Model Intercomparison Project (PAMIP) contribution to CMIP6: investigating the causes and consequences of polar amplification text January 2019
The Land Use Model Intercomparison Project (LUMIP) contribution to CMIP6: Rationale and experimental design text January 2016
Biogeochemical protocols and diagnostics for the CMIP6 Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (OMIP) text January 2017
The PMIP4 contribution to CMIP6 - Part 3: The last millennium, scientific objective, and experimental design for the PMIP4 past1000 simulations text January 2017
The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) for CMIP6 journal January 2016
The Polar Amplification Model Intercomparison Project (PAMIP) contribution to CMIP6: investigating the causes and consequences of polar amplification text January 2019
The zero emission commitment model intercomparison project (ZECMIP) contribution to C4MIP: Quantifying committed climate changes following zero carbon emission text January 2019
The PMIP4 contribution to CMIP6 – Part 3: The last millennium, scientific objective, and experimental design for the PMIP4 past1000 simulations text January 2017

Figures / Tables (15)

Figure 1(p. 8)figure Figure 1
Table 1(p. 9)table Table 1
Table 2(p. 10)table Table 2
Figure 2(p. 11)figure Figure 2
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Figure 5(p. 15)figure Figure 5
Figure 6(p. 16)figure Figure 6
Table 3(p. 16)table Table 3
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Figure 9(p. 19)figure Figure 9
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