We are grateful for a productive CFMIP meeting in Taipei, Taiwan October 19-22, 2026. Our next CFMIP meeting will be in North America in Spring/Early Summer 2028. Look for a meeting announcement at least a year in advance.
For 2027 -- we encourage our community to gather at the Pan-GASS Meeting (July 2027 in Bremerhaven, Germany) and the Gordon Research Conference (July 2027 in Maine USA), and at other relevant meetings.
CFMIP is a WCRP endorsed project which aims to improve the understanding and evaluation of clouds, cloud feedbacks, and their coupling with circulation, precipitation, and climate. In recent years, we have brought together scientists to discuss many topics including: 1) radiative forcing, climate feedbacks, and climate sensitivity, 2) influence of cloud/radiation/precipitation/circulation coupling on large scale atmosphere/ocean dynamics, 3) process based analyses of cloud structures using climate models, fine scale models, idealized experiments, and observations, 4) convective organization and radiative convective equilibrium, 5) bringing observations and models together to constrain and understand cloud radiative feedbacks
CFMIP science combines our three "C"s of circulation, clouds, and climate. We provide a forum to share and assess research using models and observations at a range of scales - from cloud/convection-resolving through the global decadal scales. Our annual meetings have grown in size and in the diversity of science topics addressed and formats. With almost 25 years of advancing climate-circulation-cloud process understanding using both models and observations, we have a rich history and a promising future. As a community-driven project, your input and contributions are very welcome.
In 2025, CFMIP has endorsed experiments in the CMIP AR7 Fast Track including foundational experiments to assess climate sensitivity and to understand patterns of surface warming. These foundational experiments originated in the CFMIP community and enable understanding through multiple generations of CMIP. We also have a CFMIP-4 protocol for CMIP7 including experiments and diagnostics with particular relevance to observational constraints and to improve process understanding with relevance to climate.
CFMIP History:
CFMIP started in 2003 and its first phase (CFMIP-1) organised an intercomparison based on perpetual July SST forced Cess style +2K experiments and 2xCO2 equilibrium mixed-layer model experiments containing ISCCP simulator in parallel with CMIP3. Results from CFMIP-1 had a substantial impact on the evaluation of clouds in models and in the identification of low level cloud feedbacks as the primary cause of inter-model spread in cloud feedback, and featured prominently in the fourth and fifth IPCC assessments.
The subsequent objective of CFMIP-2 was to inform improved assessments of climate change cloud feedbacks by providing better tools to support evaluation of clouds simulated by climate models and to understand cloud-climate feedback processes. CFMIP-2 organized further experiments as part of CMIP5, introducing seasonally varying SST perturbation experiments for the first time, as well as fixed SST CO2 forcing experiments to examine cloud adjustments, and idealized ‘aquaplanet’ experiments to establish the contributions of land and zonally asymmetric circulations to cloud feedback uncertainties. CFMIP-2 also introduced satellite simulators to CMIP via the CFMIP Observation Simulator Package (COSP), not only the ISCCP simulator, but additional simulators to facilitate the quantitative evaluation clouds using a new generation of active RADARs and LIDARs in space. Additionally CFMIP-2 introduced into CMIP5 process diagnostics such as temperature and humidity budget tendency terms and high frequency ‘cfSites’ outputs at 120 locations around the globe. CFMIP also organized a joint project with the GEWEX Global Atmospheric System Study (GASS) called CGILS (the CFMIP-GASS Intercomparison of LES and SCMs) to develop cloud feedback intercomparison cases to assess the physical credibility of cloud feedbacks in climate models by comparing Single Column Models (SCM) versions of GCMs with high resolution Large Eddy Simulations (LES) models. Additionally CFMIP-2 developed the CFMIP-OBS data portal and the CFMIP diagnostic codes repository.
Early studies arising from CFMIP-2 include numerous model evaluation studies using COSP, studies attributing cloud feedbacks and cloud adjustments to different cloud types, and the finding that idealized ‘aquaplanet’ experiments without land or Walker circulations are able to capture the essential differences between models’ global cloud feedbacks and cloud adjustments. Process outputs from CFMIP have also been used to develop and test physical mechanisms proposed to explain and constrain inter-model spread in cloud feedbacks in the CMIP5 models. CGILS has demonstrated a consensus in the responses of LES models to climate forcings and identified a number of shortcomings in the physical representations of cloud feedbacks in climate models. Additionally the CFMIP experiments have, due to their idealized nature, proven useful in a number of studies not directly related to clouds, but instead analyzing the responses of regional precipitation and circulation patterns to CO2 forcing and climate change.
CFMIP is an endorsed MIP also in CMIP6 and CMIP7 . Our contribution to CMIP6/CFMIP-3 was summarized in Webb et al. 2017. Our contribution to CMIP7 was summarized in Ceppi, Bodas-Saldedo, Zelinka et al. 2026. Our community and science goes well beyond CMIP though - with many activities that are initiated and sustained by our meetings and interactions. Simply put - we advance our science and we support our community broadly. As a community-driven project, we are always asking what comes next?
If you would like to contact the CFMIP Science Steering Committee, send e-mail to cfmip_ssc (at) googlegroups.com
CFMIP is open to anyone who has interests in clouds, circulation, precipitation and all these processes relevant to climate feedbacks and climate sensitivity. If you would like to receive announcements about CFMIP meetings and activity, please sign up on our Google Group page, or contact co-chair Jennifer Kay (Jennifer (dot) E (dot) Kay (at) colorado.edu).