The overview paper on the CMIP6 experimental design and organization has now been published in GMD (Eyring et al., 2016) . This CMIP6 overview paper presents the background and rationale for the new structure of CMIP, provides a detailed description of the CMIP Diagnostic, Evaluation and Characterization of Klima (DECK) experiments and CMIP6 historical simulations, and includes a brief introduction to the 23 CMIP6-Endorsed MIPs.

A brief summary can be found in the following overview presentation (CMIP6FinalDesign_G MD_180329.pdf) and below. After a long and wide community consultation, a new and more federated structure has been put in place. It consists of three major elements:

1. a handful of common experiments, the DECK (Diagnostic, Evaluation and Characterization of Klima) and CMIP historical simulations (1850 – near-present) that will maintain continuity and help document basic characteristics of models across different phases of CMIP,
2. common standards, coordination, infrastructure and documentation that will facilitate the distribution of model outputs and the characterization of the model ensemble, and
3. an ensemble of CMIP-Endorsed Model Intercomparison Projects (MIPs) that will be specific to a particular phase of CMIP (now CMIP6) and that will build on the DECK and CMIP historical simulations to address a large range of specific questions and fill the scientific gaps of the previous CMIP phases.

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