News

• October 2025: all scenario simulations for Euro-CORDEX-CMIP6 with CNRM-ALADIN64E1 are now completed
• September 2025: first evaluation and scenario simulations for CORDEX-Central America and CORDEX-Australasia domains are completed
• April 2024: The new Euro-CORDEX historical run with CNRM-ALADIN64E1 driven by the CMIP6 GCM CNRM-ESM2-1 is now completed for the 1850-2014 period
• March 2024: The first AROME simulations of the FPS-convection initiative are now available on the ESGF, for example on the IPSL ESGF node link
• March 2024: The new Euro-CORDEX evaluation run with CNRM-ALADIN64E1 is completed for the 1959-2022 period

CORDEX programme objectives

The CORDEX vision is to advance and coordinate the science and application of regional climate downscaling through global partnerships. The CORDEX goals are:

• To better understand relevant regional/local climate phenomena, their variability and changes, through downscaling.
• To evaluate and improve regional climate downscaling models and techniques
• To produce coordinated sets of regional downscaled projections worldwide
• To foster communication and knowledge exchange with users of regional climate information

CNRM activities

CNRM contributes to CORDEX since the beginning of the programme in the following domains and Flagship Pilot Studies with various model configurations listed below. For more information on each configuration, follow the links:

• Med-CORDEX: CNRM-ALADIN52, CNRM-RCSM4, CNRM-RCSM6, CNRM-NEMOMED8, CNRM-NEMOMED12
• Euro-CORDEX: CNRM-ALADIN53, CNRM-ALADIN63, CNRM-ALADIN64E1, (NB: CNRM-ALADIN63 is also documented on ES-DOC and ES-DOC on github)
• CORDEX Africa: CNRM-ALADIN52
• CORDEX North America: CNRM-ALADIN
• CORDEX Antarctica: CNRM-ARPEGE624 (stretched grid)
• CORDEX Australasia: CNRM-ALADIN64P1
• CORDEX Central America: CNRM-ALADIN64C1
• FPS-convection: CNRM-AROME41t1
• FPS-airsea: CNRM-NEMOMED12, CNRM-RCSM6
• FPS-aerosol: CNRM-ALADIN63
• FPS-URB-RCC: CNRM-AROME41t1, CNRM-AROME46t1

• Find more documentation about the CNRM models and runs on zenodo : https://zenodo.org/communities/cordex-cnrm/
• In addition, CNRM co-coordinates the Med-CORDEX domain (since 2009, S. Somot), has co-coordinated the CORDEX FPS-aerosol initiative (2016-2022, M. Mallet) and has co-organised the CORDEX kickoff workshop in Toulouse (2009, S. Planton).

CNRM simulation lists

• The official CORDEX list on github: CORDEX-CMIP6 (All domains), CORDEX-CMIP5
• The Euro-CORDEX simulation list: link, EURO-CORDEX-CMIP6
• The Med-CORDEX simulation list: phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, zenodo community, Med-CORDEX-CMIP6
• The FPS-convection simulation list : community data paper in preparation, contact: cordexfps-convection@meteo.fr
• The FPS-aerosol simulation list: no public list, contact: cordexfps-aerosol@meteo.fr
• The FPS-airsea simulation list: no public list, contact: cordexfps-airsea@meteo.fr

Data access

CNRM CORDEX datasets can be found in different places:

• the Interactive Atlas of the IPCC-AR6: here
• the ESGF (Earth System Grid Federation) for example the CNRM ESGF datanode or the ESGF IPSL datanode. Seo also the web page CORDEX ESGF.
• the Med-CORDEX database (www.medcordex.eu)
• on the Météo-France Climate Service portal, DRIAS, les futurs du climat
• on the Climate Data Store of the European climate service C3S (here)

How to handle the data (work in progress)

ALADIN and AROME uses the Lambert conformal projection grid. NEMOMED uses a ORCA family grid. Find, below, scripts and tips to handle those RCMs and their grid:

• How to complete ALADIN and AROME netcdf file metadata to use conservative interpolation with CDO (needed with some the oldest CORDEX runs)
• How to plot ALADIN and AROME in R
• How to plot ALADIN and AROME in Python
• How to plot NEMOMED in Python
• How to plot ALADIN and AROME in NCL
• some help for ALADIN from C3S here

Simulation known issues

Various issues have been detected in the already-shared CNRM CORDEX simulations. This can affect their usage. Find different lists below:

• the overall CNRM known issue list: link
• the CORDEX ES-DOC Errata page: link
• the Euro-CORDEX Errata page for the CMIP5 Euro-CORDEX generation: link
• The CNRM-CM5 GCM Lateral Boundary Conditions issue for CORDEX-CMIP5 simulations, affecting a large number of CORDEX first generation simulations. See more info here and here

How to contact us

Please use the generic email address