The ensemble consistency test: from CESM to MPAS and beyond

Price-Broncucia, Teo; Baker, Allison; Hammerling, Dorit; Duda, Michael; Morrison, Rebecca

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2349-2025

Articles | Volume 18, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2349-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2349-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 8

Development and technical paper

|

22 Apr 2025

Development and technical paper |

| 22 Apr 2025

The ensemble consistency test: from CESM to MPAS and beyond

Teo Price-Broncucia, Allison Baker, Dorit Hammerling, Michael Duda, and Rebecca Morrison

Data sets

pyCECT: Tools to support and run the CESM Ensemble Consistency Test A. Baker et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11662747

Model code and software

pyCECT: Tools to support and run the CESM Ensemble Consistency Test A. Baker et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11662747

MPAS-Model: Model for Prediction Across Scales models and shared framework releases MPAS-Dev https://github.com/MPAS-Dev/MPAS-Model

CAM: The Community Atmosphere Model ESCOMP https://github.com/ESCOMP/CAM

CESM: The Community Earth System Model ESCOMP https://github.com/ESCOMP/CESM

Short summary

The ensemble consistency test (ECT) and its ultrafast variant (UF-ECT) have become powerful tools in the development community for the identification of unwanted changes in the Community Earth System Model (CESM). We develop a generalized setup framework to enable easy adoption of the ECT approach for other model developers and communities. This framework specifies test parameters to accurately characterize model variability and balance test sensitivity and computational cost.