piControl is an experiment of the CMIP5 - Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 ( https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/mips/cmip5 ). CMIP5 is meant to provide a framework for coordinated climate change experiments for the next five years and thus includes simulations for assessment in the AR5 as well as others that extend beyond the AR5.
3.1 piControl (3.1 Pre-Industrial Control) - Version 1: Pre-Industrial coupled atmosphere/ocean control run. Imposes non-evolving pre-industrial conditions.
Experiment design: https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/mips/cmip5/experiment_design.html
List of output variables: https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/mips/cmip5/datadescription.html
Output: time series per variable in model grid spatial resolution in netCDF format
Earth System model and the simulation information: CIM repository
Entry name/title of data are specified according to the Data Reference Syntax ( https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/mips/cmip5/docs/cmip5_data_reference_syntax.pdf ) as activity/product/institute/model/experiment/frequency/modeling realm/MIP table/ensemble member/version number/variable name/CMOR filename.nc .
There are five component models: atmosphere, surface land, ocean, sea ice and surface wave models.