After several years of development, the French IPSLFootnote 1 and CNRMFootnote 2-CERFACSFootnote 3 modelling groups are presenting to the international scientific community the climate simulations they have prepared as part of the 5th Phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5).

The following set of manuscripts provides a detailed description and evaluation of the coupled models and of their individual components. It also presents an analysis of the simulations in terms of internal climate variability, climate response to natural and anthropogenic forcings, physical, chemical and biogeochemical feedbacks, and regional studies.

This work benefitted tremendously from the national INSU/LEFE “MissTerre” project (P.I. P. Braconnot and S. Planton) which aims at strengthening collaborations among the French research teams involved in climate modeling. Several workshops and substantial data and expertise exchanges has been possible thanks to this project. This joint Special Issue analyzing simulations from the two models is one of the main results of this collaboration.

This work was also supported by other national and international projects cited in the relevant articles. This work was made possible thanks to the High-Performance Computing resources of CCRT and IDRIS made available by GENCI (Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif), CEA (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives) and CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and thanks to Météo-France computing facility.

More information about the IPSL-CM5 and CNRM-CM5 climate models can be found at: http://icmc.ipsl.fr/and at http://www.cnrm.meteo.fr/cmip5/, respectively.

We are most grateful to the many people from the IPSL Climate Modelling Centre, CNRM and CERFACS who made possible the production, the preparation and the distribution of the IPSL-CM5 and CNRM-CM5 model results.

This special collection was coordinated by

Juliette Mignot and Sandrine Bony