An initial  focus of the CORDEX initiative was to establish a central CORDEX archive supplemented by regional data portals. However, it soon became clear that a geographically distributed archiving system such as the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) would offer much greater flexibility for the provision of numerous CORDEX RCM simulations produced by many modelling groups across the globe, analogous to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5).

ESGF is an up-to date scientific infrastructure for distributing climate data and will now become WCRP’s main tool for providing global and regional climate simulations together with observations and reanalyses over the next decade. At the first CORDEX Science Advisory Team (SAT) meeting in May 2014 the CORDEX data archiving progress was discussed in detail and the SAT strongly recommended the use of ESGF as the main tool for providing CORDEX data to users. However, a number of CORDEX simulations for different CORDEX domains were completed before CORDEX-ESGF archiving infrastructure was in operation and taking into account a rising demand for CORDEX results a few regional data portals have been established.

There is no central CORDEX archive and CORDEX output can be accessed using the following:

1. The federative ESGF infrastructure;
2. Impact Portals (only ESGF segment);
3. Regional Data Portals; and additionally
4. Services provided by individual institutions.