Model year

The model year (MY) of a product is a number used worldwide, but with a high level of prominence in North America, to describe approximately when a product was produced, and it usually indicates the coinciding base specification (design revision number) of that product.

The model year and the actual calendar year of production rarely coincide. For example, a 2009 model year automobile is available during most of the 2009 calendar year, but is usually also available from the third quarter of 2008 because production of the 2009 model began in July and August 2008. When a new model is introduced there may be an additional delay to retool and retrain for production of the new model.

The variables of build date and design revision number are semi-independent. There is no natural law that forces one to be strictly correlated to the other, other than that

Model year (computer modeling)

The term model year in computer modeling is used for calculated equations describing one calendar year of data. If a climate model, for example, is calculating the climate from 2015 to 2020, the computer has to calculate 5 model years, however it most likely takes much less time for the computer to do so.

The term is used in descriptions for models like climateprediction.net, which has produced about 125 million model years of data until May 2011.

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