Summary Statistics for Climate Modes of Variability in the PCMDI Metrics Package

Systematic and routine evaluation of multiple climate models in a collective manner is essential, especially as hundreds if not thousands of simulations will be available in the near future, with the data burden increasing to Petabyte scale (e.g. CMIP6).  In this presentation we highlight climate variability statistics currently available in the PCMDI Metrics Package (PMP).   One challenge for Earth System Models is reproducing the observed characteristics of major modes of climate variability, e.g., the Northern Annular Mode (NAM), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Southern Annular Mode (SAM), Pacific/North American Pattern (PNA), and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).  Most of these modes have been defined in terms of leading modes of Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOFs),  and here we describe how the diagnostics and metrics  have been incorporated into the PMP, and provide a demonstration of the database of results that can be exploited by modelers and researchers for uses such as model development and relative skill.