The terms of use for CMIP6 data are outlined in the Guidance for Data Users and include a reference to the CMIP6 data license, present in every file. The original license was based upon the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-SA 4.0), with an option to specify Non-Commercial use.

The ShareAlike clause in this license was preventing, or was perceived to be preventing, our data from being used or included in new services and products which was not our intention.  We have therefore agreed a blanket relaxation of the license on all CMIP6 data published by the Met Office Hadley Centre (MOHC), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), National Institute of Meteorological Sciences/Korea Meteorological Administration (NIMS-KMA) and National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) to an equivalent one based upon the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0).

Equivalent relaxations have now been agreed for all data published to CMIP6 by all modelling groups. A summary of all licenses and their relaxations can be found via the CMIP6 Controlled Vocabularies github repository (follow link to the “source_id_licenses” page) and via the CMIP6 Citation Service pages (see table of links below).

All derived services and products are still required to cite our data following the guidance linked to above.

Any queries about licensing can be directed to cmip6.ukesm1@metoffice.gov.uk and cmip6.hadgem3@metoffice.gov.uk