The Data Integration for Model Evaluation Web Site: A One-Stop Shop for Model Evaluation

Abstract

This paper introduces the contents of the Global Energy and Water Experiment (GEWEX) Cloud System Study (GCSS) Data Integration for Model Evaluation (DIME) Web site. The Web site is a resource created for atmospheric modelers who want to run and test regional and cloud-resolving models in a variety of atmospheric conditions. It contains both data-sets to initialize model runs and observations to test the output of those runs for a number of different field experiment campaigns. The evaluation data come mostly from large-scale satellite and meteorological datasets, extracted for the time period and region of the experiment. For more detailed evaluations, links are provided to the datasets collected by the experiments themselves. Climatological composites of certain atmospheric parameters are also provided, along with software that produces satellite-like parameters from model output. The intention of the DIME Web site creators is to collect in one place all the necessary tools needed to initialize, run, and produce meaningful evaluations of atmospheric model outputs.