CMIP5 - Data Access - Terms of Use

Terms of use agreement for CMIP5 model output

All model output in the CMIP5 archive is available for “non-commercial research and educational purposes.” A subset (about half) of the data has also been released for “unrestricted” use, see table in the document "Modeling Groups and their Terms of Use" (Word doc) . Users registering to access CMIP5 output will be granted access to some or all of the data, depending on which of the following terms of use are agreed to:

Terms of use for data limited to non-commercial research and educational purposes

• a) I agree to restrict my use of CMIP5 model output for non-commercial research and educational purposes only.

  
  

  Results from non-commercial research are expected to be made generally available through open publication and must not be considered proprietary. Materials prepared for educational purposes cannot be sold. These restrictions may only be relaxed by permission of the individual modeling groups responsible for the simulations.

OR

Terms of use for unrestricted data:

• a) I understand that the subset of CMIP5 model output that will be made accessible to this group has been designated for "unrestricted" use.

For both groups of users, the terms of use include these additional statements:

• b) I will hold no individual(s), organization(s), or group(s) responsible for any errors in the models or in their output data.

• c) In publications that rely on the CMIP5 model output, I will appropriately credit the data providers by an acknowledgment similar to the following:

  
  

  “We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups (listed in Table XX of this paper) for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the U.S. Department of Energy's Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals.”

  
  

  where “Table XX” in your paper should list the models and modeling groups that provided the data you used.

  
  

• d) I understand that Digital Object Identifiers (DOI’s used, for example, in journal citations) will be assigned to various subsets of the CMIP5 multi-model dataset, and when available and as appropriate, I will cite these references in my publications. I will consult the CMIP5 website (http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/) to learn how to do this.

• e) I acknowledge the potential limitations of the data obtained from this archive. These may include (but are not necessarily limited to) errors in the models, shortcomings in the experiment designs, the conjectural quality of the forcing scenarios used to drive the models, and so on.

• f) I understand that although the model output has been subjected to a quality control procedure, unrecognized errors almost certainly remain.

• g) To aid participating groups in understanding and improving upon their models’ behaviors, I will respond to reasonable requests from the WGCM for feedback about my CMIP5 research results (e.g., reporting model deficiencies, recording CMIP5 publications, etc.).