DAMIP is part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6), a coordinated international effort "to better understand past, present and future climate changes arising from either natural, unforced variability or in response to changes in radiative forcing in a multi-model context."

DAMIP is the component of CMIP6 dealing with understanding the individual contributions of various external factors to past and future changes in global and regional climate.

The primary goals of DAMIP are to facilitate improved estimation of the contributions of anthropogenic and natural forcing changes to observed global warming as well as to observed global and regional changes in other climate variables; to contribute to the estimation of how historical emissions have altered and are altering contemporary climate risk; and to facilitate improved observationally-constrained projections of future climate change.