PCMDI has led research into the detection and attribution of the causes of climate-change. This work has considered a wide-range of changes to the global climate system and included analyses of atmospheric temperature, precipitable water, ocean heat content and other key aspects of the climate system
PCMDI’s mission is to develop improved methods and tools for the diagnosis and evaluation of climate models. The PCMDI metrics package is used to objectively compare results from climate models with observations using well-established statistical tests. Results are produced in the context of all model simulations contributed to CMIP6 and earlier CMIP phases.
PCMDI conducts extensive research to try and reduce uncertainty in climate sensitivity, with a focus on its primary driver, cloud feedback. This includes developing advanced diagnostics for evaluating cloud feedbacks, using cloud controlling factors to observationally constrain feedbacks, and discovering emergent constraints.