DATA UPDATE: As of October 2025 the links to the datasets are (they have been updated in the code):

URLpast = "https://esgf-node.ornl.gov/thredds/dodsC/css03_data/CMIP6/HighResMIP/AS-RCEC/HiRAM-SIT-HR/highresSST-present/r1i1p1f1/day/pr/gn/v20210713/pr_day_HiRAM-SIT-HR_highresSST-present_r1i1p1f1_gn_19530101-19531231.nc";

URLproj = "https://esgf-node.ornl.gov/thredds/dodsC/css03_data/CMIP6/HighResMIP/AS-RCEC/HiRAM-SIT-HR/highresSST-future/r1i1p1f1/day/pr/gn/v20210707/pr_day_HiRAM-SIT-HR_highresSST-future_r1i1p1f1_gn_20430101-20431231.nc";

Analyzing and Visualizing Open Precipitation Data in MATLAB®

A MATLAB® Live Script with accompanying

Jupyter® Notebook,
.m file and
reproducible capsule on Code Ocean® with DOI

to access, process and visualize global climate (precipitation) data from the WCRP CMIP6 (World Climate Research Programme Coupled Intercomparison Project - Phase 6) database.

Get started

No downloads, no installations
Open directly in MATLAB Online
Step-by-step tutorial shows how to
- Re-use available climate data. Access a list of openly available sources such as NASA, ECMWF, CMCC
- Query and inspect the metadata associated with these projects using commands directly from MATLAB (RESTful API)
- Avoid downloads. Access specific data from within the database directly and avoid time-consuming downloads of large data
- Read NetCDF (*.nc) data from within MATLAB corresponding to specific geospatial parameters (e.g., temperature, precipitation flux, sea ice thickness, etc.)
- Filter, analyze and visualize climate data using standard MATLAB functions, mapping projections, graphical tools and statistical methods.
- Let others run your code and reproduce your results quickly. Publish the results on GitHub and make them accessible using "Open With MATLAB Online"
- Allow people to cite you! Generate a DOI for your code by linking your GitHub repository to one of several DOI-generating sites.
Live Script contains easy-to-use menus and interactive tools
Available on File Exchange for directly installing onto your MATLAB path with one click using the Add-Ons button
Accompanying Jupyter notebook (.ipynb) for use in a Jupyter environment. More information on MATLAB kernel here
Accompanying Code Ocean reproducible capsule for one-click reproducibility of the code by anyone, including reviewers.

About the WCRP-CMIP6 Database

The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, began in 1995 under the auspices of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). By 2024 it is in its sixth phase (CMIP6). CMIP6 coordinates independent model intercomparison activities and their experiments which have adopted a common infrastructure for collecting, organizing, and distributing output from models performing common sets of experiments.

The Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) maintains a global system of federated data centers that allow access to the largest archive of model climate data world-wide. This portal (https://esgf-data.dkrz.de/search/cmip6-dkrz/), hosted by the German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ), is an interface for users to access model data that are distributed in several data centers, also called data nodes. Such portals provide access to the output of the climate models contributing to the next assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC.

Required Products

This tutorial uses the following products:

MATLAB®
Mapping Toolbox™
Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox™

This code has been developed and tested using MATLAB 2023b

Note This tutorial works best when delivered by a tutor. It is important to highlight best practices when working with Open Data, publishing Open Code or making research output reproducible.

You can use this link to download the data used in this example from the ESGF website

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