Coupled Model Intercomparison Project

In climatology, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) is a collaborative framework designed to improve knowledge of climate change.

It was organized in 1995 by the Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP).

The METAFOR project created an exhaustive schema describing the scientific, technical, and numerical aspects of CMIP runs which was archived along with the output data.

The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report summarizes information of CMIP5 experiments, while the CMIP5 experimental protocol was endorsed by the 12th Session of the WCRP Working on this Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM).

[10] The structure of the CMIP6 has been extended with respect to CMIP5 by providing an equivalent framework named CMIP Diagnostic, Evaluation and Characterization of Klima (DECK) (klima is Greek for "climate"), together with a set of Endorsed MIPs to improve the description of aspects of climate models beyond the core set of common experiments included in DECK.

However, CMIP-Endorsed Model Intercomparison Projects (MIPs) are still built on the DECK and CMIP historical simulations, therefore their main goal is just to address a wider range of specific questions.

To achieve that it includes methods to facilitate a wider distribution and characterization of model outputs, and common standard tools for their analyses.