Hundreds of scientists in dozens of institutions are embarking on the next phase of the world’s largest coordinated climate-modelling effort.

Climate-modelling groups use supercomputers to run climate models that simulate the physics, chemistry and biology of the Earth’s atmosphere, land and oceans.

These models play a crucial role in helping scientists understand how the climate is responding as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere.

For four decades, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) has guided the work of the climate-modelling community by providing a framework that allows for millions of results to be collected together and compared.

The resulting projections are used extensively in climate science and policy and underpin the landmark reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).