Articles | Volume 19, issue 17
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-8469-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Special issue:
The Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP) contribution to CMIP7 – description of new experimental protocols and preliminary results
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- Final revised paper (published on 11 Sep 2026)
- Preprint (discussion started on 08 May 2026)
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor
| : Report abuse
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-2417', Anonymous Referee #1, 01 Jun 2026
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Daniele Visioni, 18 Aug 2026
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CC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-2417', Sarah Doherty, 02 Jun 2026
- AC3: 'Reply on CC1', Daniele Visioni, 18 Aug 2026
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CC2: 'Clarifying question on MCB protocols in egusphere-2026-2417', Hannah Marie Horowitz, 20 Jul 2026
- CC3: 'Reply on CC2', Matthew Henry, 21 Jul 2026
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-2417', Trude Storelvmo, 02 Aug 2026
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Daniele Visioni, 18 Aug 2026
Peer review completion
AR – Author's response | RR – Referee report | ED – Editor decision | EF – Editorial file upload
AR by Daniele Visioni on behalf of the Authors (18 Aug 2026)
Author's response
Author's tracked changes
Manuscript
ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (19 Aug 2026) by Ulas Im
RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (19 Aug 2026)
RR by Trude Storelvmo (23 Aug 2026)
ED: Publish as is (24 Aug 2026) by Ulas Im
AR by Daniele Visioni on behalf of the Authors (02 Sep 2026)
Manuscript
Visioni et al. describe the plans for the contribution of a geoengineering MIP to CMIP7. This is a very laudable community effort, and the modelling community evidently organised the process of defining the simulations and simulation protocols in a very open and transparent way. The paper states that much of the definitions is based on the outcomes of a workshop to which the community was invited.
I have a few somewhat overarching suggestions for improvements, and then a number of smaller suggestions.
– Some of the propositions/requests in my view are too vague to be a meaningful MIP contribution. Of course each modelling group can (and should) do their own simulations, and smaller groups can always come up with own ideas. The very meaning of a MIP is that it is a strict protocol and that a meaningfully large number of groups submit simulations that exactly follow this protocol. So my suggestion is to omit everything that is only vaguely defined. There could be for example an appendix to the paper in which such suggestions – potentially these are minority opinions from the workshop that didn’t make it to the Tier-1 MIP proposal? – can be listed as examples.
– A bit related comment: The real MIP proposal is the Tier-1 simulations. However, they are impossible to do without some of the Preparatory experiments. These Preparatory experiments, in turn, are not understandable really before one understood the Tier-1 experiments. To the reader of the paper, a much more logical structure would be to describe the Tier-1 experiments, and include in these the Preparatory experiments (except for the third block, Inj-Sulf-15N etc., which seem to be of rather little use except for the zoo of Tier-2 experiments). Of course I acknowledge it might be difficult to change such things after the workshop, though. In the Tier-2 experiments, to me only the experiments listed in Table 3 are well-enough defined to be part of CMIP7. The other experiments are very vague and would better be done and consolidated within the community. They could be described here in an Appendix making clear such ideas were discussed but then not included as being well-defined enough for a large MIP effort as part of CMIP7. Again I acknowledge that the community may have discussed such arguments in detail and the harm done in listing such ideas here is probably minor since groups will carefully select what they contribute anyway.
– The integration of GeoMIP into CMIP7 should be discussed. In particular, what are the synergies with AerChemMIP and DAMIP?
– There are very important aspects of the Earth system models that may have a large influence on the outcomes (e.g. the cloud microphysical schemes for MCB and CCT). The protocol should define a way to document these particularly relevant ESM aspects in an easily accessible and transparent manner.
– Several figures show results but these rather distract from the MIP description. Fig. 3, 5, 7, 8 in my view contribute little to the paper but are rather confusing. They could go to an appendix or to a separate paper.
L12 – “that all participating models are encouraged to run”: the corollary is that models are discouraged to run tier-II simulations
L15 – “propose their own experiments” links to my main comment above: this is not a contribution to a MIP but the bread-and-butter of every modelling team. It should be omitted from this paper or at best be moved to an appendix
L26 – “increase of Earth’s albedo through _increased_ cloud brightness”
L26 – what could be “other cloud changes”? cloud coverage?
L47 – the “potential asymmetries” should be explained
L111 – “this could include metrics”: I would expect from a MIP definition a definition of specific metrics. Maybe the text could point here to Section 5 (Data request) and take up this point in that section 5.
L125 – “Models can also perform…” this seems to be a redundant statement, of course they could. If there is a reason to state this here, this reason should be made transparent (e.g. “The GeoMIP community has also discussed simulations at other latitudes… but decided not to include those in the Tier-1 request.” or so).
L141 – Only later the emission height and size distribution are defined, it would be useful to point to this here.
l147 – The community uses the term “aerosol-cloud interactions” since AR5, “aerosol indirect effects” is outdated.
l155 – It should be clearly defined how this careful documentation should look like.
L160 – The Table said it is run for 20 years (not 40 years)
L202 – Only one ensemble member run to 2150, was stated in the table.
L225 – “as little as possible” is a difficult statement, maybe simply “little”?
L232 – I don’t understand the “Legendre polynomials” explanations. A clear definition of who T1 and T2 are computed should be provided.
L248 – For the MCB experiment, a definition for “maintain the PI+1.5°C temperature target” is provided, in line 332, at ±0.2°C. This seems meaningful.
L254 – “it is possible” rather than saying what is possible the protocol should describe how it should be done exactly.
L258 – “can be computed” similar point, it should be said what should be computed and how.
L267 – “can request a dataset” – how exactly, to whom to address?
L327 – “lowest model layer” seems to be too vague. Models have vastly different vertical resolutions. The request should clarify a height range instead.
L329 – I would find a map useful.
L334 – Only one ensemble member to 2150, right?
L363 – Also the number is evenly distributed since the size distribution is given.
L411/Figure 6 – The “intervention magnitude” curve for G7-0.5K-SAI seems to be wrong to me. The magnitude should be much larger very early after 2035.
L421 – If “ramped up linearly”, the temperature evolution would look very different from the one depicted in Fig. 6.
L424 – But here no overshoot is considered?
L435 – Same question, there is no overshoot in this scenario.
L517/Section 4.3 – This entire section deviates a lot from the other Tier-2 descriptions. As stated above, in my view best would be to move these very vaguely defined simulations out of the actual MIP description (e.g. to an appendix). If the authors choose they want to include these, the description of the mixed-phase cloud thinning experiments should be harmonised with the description of the other Tier-2 simulations.
L567 – specifically this section should be incorporated into Section 5.
L660 – “technique is” or “techniques are”