AMIP: The Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project

The Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) is an international effort to determine the systematic climate errors of atmospheric models under realistic conditions, and calls for the simulation of the climate of the decade 1979–1988 using the observed monthly averaged distributions of sea surface temperature and sea ice as boundary conditions. Organized by the Working Group on Numerical Experimentation as a contribution to the World Climate Research Programme, AMIP involves the international atmospheric modeling community in a major test and intercomparison of model performance; in addition to an agreed-to set of monthly averaged output variables, each of the participating models will generate a daily history of state. These data will be stored and made available in standard format by the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Following completion of the computational phase of AMIP in 1993, emphasis will shift to a series of diagnostic subprojects, now being planned, for the detailed examination of model performance and the simulation of specific physical processes and phenomena. AMIP offers an unprecedented opportunity for the comprehensive evaluation and validation of current atmospheric models, and is expected to provide valuable information for model improvement.