As Earth system models (ESMs) grow in complexity, there is an increasing need for rapid and comprehensive evaluation of their scientific performance. The upcoming Assessment Fast Track for the Seventh Phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP7) will require a fast response for model analyses designed to inform and drive integrated Earth system assessments. To meet this challenge, the CMIP model benchmarking task team which was set up right at the start of CMIP7 focused during its two-phase mandate on two main topics related to the evaluation and benchmarking of CMIP model simulation:

(1) Collecting information about available open-source community model evaluation and benchmarking packages that had been used to work with CMIP data, and gathering details about the underlying principles of climate model evaluation and benchmarking and different evaluation approaches.

(2) The scientific definition of the Rapid Evaluation Framework (REF) and its technical implementation for the simulations of CMIP7. The REF is a community-driven platform, and its initial implementation builds upon existing community evaluation and benchmarking tools and is aimed at generating and organizing diagnostics covering a variety of model variables. Operational integration with the ESGF permits automated execution of the REF for specific diagnostics as soon as model data are published on ESGF by participating modeling centers.