PCMDI Metrics Package (PMP)

The Program for Climate Model Diagnosis & Intercomparison (PCMDI) Metrics Package (PMP) is used to provide “quick-look” objective comparisons of Earth System Models (ESMs) with one another and available observations. Results are produced in the context of all model simulations contributed to CMIP6 and earlier CMIP phases. Currently, the comparisons emphasize metrics of large- to global-scale annual cycle and both tropical and extra-tropical modes of variability. Recent release (v3) include established statistics for mean climate, ENSO, MJO, extratropical modes of variability, regional monsoons, and high frequency characteristics of simulated precipitation as a part of U.S. DOE’s Benchmarking of simulated precipitation.

PCMDI uses the PMP to produce quick-look simulation summaries across generations of CMIP.

Video for a brief PMP introduction (2 min 30 sec)

Getting Started

Installation requirements and instructions are available on the Installation page

An overview of the summary statistics available via the package are summarized with interactive Jupyter notebooks in the PMP Metrics page

Some installation support for CMIP participating modeling groups is available: pcmdi-metrics@llnl.gov

The PMP expects model data to be CF-compliant, otherwise, to successfully use the package may require some input data conditioning. It is also strongly suggested to work with observation datasets following the CF-compliant, such as datasets from the obs4MIPs project.

References

Lee, J., P. J. Gleckler, M.-S. Ahn, A. Ordonez, P. Ullrich, K. R. Sperber, K. E. Taylor, Y. Y. Planton, E. Guilyardi, P. Durack, C. Bonfils, M. D. Zelinka, L.-W. Chao, B. Dong, C. Doutriaux, C. Zhang, T. Vo, J. Boutte, M. F. Wehner, A. G. Pendergrass, D. Kim, Z. Xue, A. T. Wittenberg, and J. Krasting, 2024: Systematic and Objective Evaluation of Earth System Models: PCMDI Metrics Package (PMP) version 3. Geoscientific Model Development, 17, 3919–3948, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-3919-2024.

Gleckler et al. (2016), A more powerful reality test for climate models, Eos, 97, doi:10.1029/2016EO051663.

Acknowledgement

Huge thank you to all of the PMP contributors!

PMP is developed by scientists and developers from the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). This work is sponsored by the Regional and Global Model Analysis (RGMA) program of the Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division (EESSD) in the Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) within the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The work is performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.

License

BSD 3-Clause License. See LICENSE for details