MPI-ESM couples the atmosphere, ocean and land surface through the exchange of energy, momentum, water and carbon dioxide. It is based on the components of ECHAM6 for atmosphere and MPIOM for ocean as well as JSBACH for terrestrial biosphere and HAMOCC for the ocean´s biogeochemistry. JSBACH is the land component of both MPI-ESM and ICON-ESM. The coupling of atmosphere and land on the one hand and ocean and biogeochemistry on the other hand is made possible by the separate coupling program OASIS3.

MPI-ESM was employed for the MPI-M contributions to CMIP6 process (“Coupled Models Intercomparison Project Phase 6”).

MPI-ESM is freely available to the scientific community and can be accessed with a license on the MPI-M Model distribution website.
 

A scientific documentation is provided through many papers in a the  JAMES special issue "The Max Planck Institute for Meteorology Earth System Model", including the MPI-ESM overview paper.