CEDS Data Details
March 2025 – The emissions data for CMIP7 was published on ESGF as version v2025_03_18.
April 2025 – A user discovered an error in the seasonal distribution of emissions for the year 2023. While this does not impact CMIP7 historical model runs (which end in 2021), a new version of the data will be published with this corrected.
The CEDS anthropogenic data is published within the ESGF system under the following metadata:
:MIP Era = “CMIP7”
:activity_id = “input4MIPs”;
:realm = “atmos”;
:institute = “PNNL-JGCRI”
September 2016 – see the main CEDS project page for a link to the CEDS gitHub repository. Issues with the released data will be documented there on the issues tab (search for the CMIP6 tag and make sure to include closed issues). Data users can also submit issues. Information on data updates subsequent to the CMIP6 data release can also be found there.
Gridded Data Update (May 2017)
Users of previously released gridded data (versions v2016-06-18 and v2016-07-26) should update to the May 2017 versions of the CMIP6 historical data to avoid the following issues.
Data users have reported two issues with the older CMIP6 gridded data releases. These are: 1) year-to-year inconsistencies in the country/sector level gridded data and 2) a small error in the intended seasonal distribution of. Neither of these issues change total by country and sector.
Issue 1) above regarding gridded distributions causes non-trivial, and sometimes sudden shifts, in the spatial distribution within countries. These shifts are most noticeable for large countries such as the USA and China. Users have reports that these can have significant impacts on results in some models (such as the magnitude of aerosol indirect effects).
The May 2017 and later gridded data releases on ESGF corrects both of these issues.
Documentation of these issues, including time series and spatial graphs are available at https://goo.gl/tGrc27.
Gridded s Data
Data from the CEDS Project for use in CMIP6 historical and preindustrial control runs is being distributed through the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF). Please see the README file available below before using this data. Note that revisions to gridded data listed below changed only spatial allocation within countries – CEDS by country and sector remained at the values originally released in v2016-07-26 (v2017-05-18 for CO2 and CH4).
CMIP6 Gridded Data Release History
- September 2017: New versions of aircraft gridded (ver. 2017-08-30 and 2017-10-05 for SO2) were published on ESGF. This is basically a cosmetic change, whereby aircraft were set to zero before 1920. NOTE: You may have to check the “Show All Versions“ box on ESGF to see CEDS supplemental files (which did not change from the previous release.)
- August 2017: We have released a “rough cut” extension of CH4 surface fluxes between1850 and 1970 (in decadal increments) for experiments that require CH4 data over all years. This data is on ESGF and is labeled as supplemental-data (ver. 2017-05-18).
- May 2017: *** IMPORTANT *** revised gridded data (ver. 2017-05-18) were published that corrected some errors in the previous gridded data (ver. 2016-06-18, and 2016-07-26, see README and analysis of difference between the new and old data sets at: https://goo.gl/tGrc27). The new release also included CO2 (all years) and CH4 (from 1970 forward).
- September 2016: files were re-published in a new format (with sectors contained within a dimension) due to a limitation in ESGF software on some nodes. (version numbers were amended with -sectordim)
- June and July 2016: preindustrial (1750-1850) data (ver. 2016-06-18) and historical 1851-2014 (ver. v2016-07-26) for aerosol and reactive gas species were published on ESGF.
The CEDS anthropogenic data is published within the ESGF system under the following metadata:
:MIP Era = “CMIP6”
:activity_id = “input4MIPs”;
:realm = “atmos”;
:institute = “PNNL-JGCRI”
You can also search for a specific species under the “variable” category in your ESGF search. Note that to download ESGF data you will need to register for a free OpenID if you do not already have one.
Supplemental data with speciated VOC emissions and fluxes from solid biofuel combustion are also provided through ESGF, see the README files linked below for further information. (metadata tagged as :product = “supplementary-emissions-data”).
Please note, the variables called xx-em-solid-biofuel are not open biomass fluxes. These are a sub-set of anthropogenic data provided at the request of some users who utilize this data as proxy information to set model aerosol parameters as described in the README.
See: https://www.earthsystemcog.org/projects/cog/ for a list of ESGF nodes. The input4MIPs project can be found by using “Search with options”. You can also go directly to: https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/input4mips.
Auxiliary Gridded Information
Only the gridded netCDF data files have been provided through ESGF. Several auxiliary files are provided here including:
- A README (September 2017) text file with data description and other details
- A single Checksum file that provides machine readable totals by species, sector, month, and year for 1750-through-2014
- netCDF file with assumed grid cell areas
- Comparison graphs show the new time series as compared to the RCP historical data used in CMIP5 (see README file for a discussion) for Pre-industrial (1750-1850) and for 1850-2014
- VOC README file for the speciated VOC emissions (released as supplementary gridded data on ESGF)
Future scenario data have been produced consistent with the CEDS historical data and are also available via ESGF by the IAMC. For details see the CMIP6 Forcing Datasets Summary google doc . As a service to assist modelers, checksum information for those future scenarios are provided at the link below.
- Checksum files that provides machine readable totals by species, sector, month, and year for 2015 – 2100 for each IAMC scenario.
Journal Articles
The CMIP6 data release has been documented in the following papers:
Hoesly, R. M., Smith, S. J., Feng, L., Klimont, Z., Janssens-Maenhout, G., Pitkanen, T., Seibert, J. J., Vu, L., Andres, R. J., Bolt, R. M., Bond, T. C., Dawidowski, L., Kholod, N., Kurokawa, J.-I., Li, M., Liu, L., Lu, Z., Moura, M. C. P., O’Rourke, P. R., and Zhang, Q.: Geosci. Model Dev., 11, 369-408, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-369-2018, 2018.
Supplementary files are available for download with the article including:
- Zip file supplement
- Data by country
- Data by sector and country
- Data by fuel
- mapping file with country definitions
- Supplemental Figure and Tables
- Supplemental Data and Assumptions
Updated Supplemental files which now include CO2, CH4 (from 1960), supplemental CH4 (extension to 1850), as well as data for all small countries/regions/islands (rather than aggregate regions, i.e. Other Asia or Other Africa, as in the original supplement) are available HERE.
CMIP6 gridded data generation, focusing on historical anthropogenic and future scenarios, is discussed here:
Feng, L., Smith, S. J., Braun, C., Crippa, M., Gidden, M. J., Hoesly, R., Klimont, Z., van Marle, M., van den Berg, M., and van der Werf, G. R (2020), Geosci. Model Dev., 13, 461-482, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-461-2020 .
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Model Sensitivity to Specific Flux Characteristics
Fluxes of anthropogenic aerosol and precursor compounds substantially alter the Earth’s radiative balance, change the oxidation capacity of the atmosphere, alter cloud processes and precipitation amounts, and result in significant impacts on human health and ecosystems. One of the primary tools used to examine these effects are global models. There are a number of characteristics of these data that can influence model results, such as seasonality and assumed injection height, that are not either uncertain or not specified in current global datasets.
The aim of of this project is to quantify the influence of these characteristics on model results. Atmosphere-only simulations will be used to examine a impact of a suite of emission perturbations.
Current Status (April 2025)
A set of atmosphere-only model runs with specified ocean temperatures and nudged winds run for six year period, reporting concentration, deposition, and forcing variables. While these runs do not include fully coupled dynamics, these are computationally less expensive and we can, therefore, quantify the magnitude of any effects for a larger number of perturbations. We can also more directly compare results from both ESMs and CTMs in the these experiments.
Phase 1a
The experimental protocol for Phase 1a was developed fall 2020. The reference case uses CMIP6 historical data. The current experimental protocol is available here. Ten models ran the phase 1a simulations PNNL (E3SM), PNNL (CESM1), GSFC (GEOS), GISS, GFDL, NCAR, HadGEM-UKCA, OsloCTM3, MIROC-SPRINTARS, NorESM. A journal paper describing the results has been published here. We found that effective SO2 injection height can have a very large impact on model results, with the assumed SO4/SO2 fraction also impacting results. A version of the CMIP6 data with no seasonality for use in these experiments are available in this data repository.
Phase 1b
Phase 1b simulations will focus on uncertainties in the spatial distribution of ocean shipping fluxes. These results are being analyzed and a paper will be submitted soon.
This project is using the ESMVal tool for analyzing model results. We would like to thank the ESMValtool team for technical assistance.
Please contact ssmith@pnnl.gov for further information.