In this paper the model outputs from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) phase 5 (CMIP5) are used to examine the climatology and interannual variability of the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM). The multimodel ensemble (MME) is able to reproduce reasonably well the circulation features of the EAWM. The simulated surface air temperature still suffers from a cold bias over East Asia, but this bias is reduced compared with CMIP phase 3 models. The intermodel spread is relatively small for the large-scale circulations, but is large for the lower-tropospheric meridional wind and precipitation along the East Asian coast. The interannual variability of the EAWM-related circulations can be captured by most of the models. A general bias is that the simulated variability is slightly weaker than in the observations. Based on a selected dynamic EAWM index, the patterns of the EAWM-related anomalies are well reproduced in MME although the simulated anomalies are slightly weaker than the observations. One general bias is that the northeasterly anomalies over East Asia cannot be captured to the south of 308N. This bias may arise both from the inadequacies of the EAWM index and from the ability of models to capture the EAWM-related tropical-extratropical interactions. The ENSO-EAWM relationship is then evaluated and about half of the models can successfully capture the observed ENSO-EAWM relationship, including the significant negative correlation between Niño-3.4 and EAWM indices and the anomalous anticyclone (or cyclone) over the northwestern Pacific. The success of these models is attributed to the reasonable simulation of both ENSO's spatial structure and its strength of interannual variability.

The East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) and its variability involve circulation systems in both the tropics and midlatitudes as well as in both the lower and upper troposphere. Considering this fact, a new EASM index (NEWI) is proposed based on 200-hPa zonal wind, which takes into account wind anomalies in the southern (about 58N), middle (about 208N), and northern areas (about 358N) of East Asia. The NEWI can capture the interannual EASM-related climate anomalies and the interdecadal variability well. Compared to previous indices, the NEWI shows a better performance in describing precipitation and air temperature variations over East Asia. It can also show distinct climate anomalous features in early and late summer. The NEWI is tightly associated with the East Asian-Pacific or the Pacific-Japan teleconnection, suggesting a possible role of internal dynamics in the EASM variability. Meanwhile, the NEWI is significantly linked to El Niño-Southern Oscillation and tropical Indian Ocean sea surface temperature anomalies. Furthermore, the NEWI is highly predictable in the ENSEMBLES models, indicating its advantage for operational prediction of the EASM. The physical mechanism of the EASM variability as represented by the NEWI is also explicit. Both warm advection anomalies of temperature by anomalous westerly winds and the advection of anomalous positive relative vorticity by northerly basic winds cause anomalous ascending motion over the mei-yu-changma-baiu rainfall area, and vice versa over the South China Sea area. Hence, this NEWI would be a good choice to study, monitor, and predict the EASM.

The influence of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the East Asian–western Pacific (EAWP) climate in boreal winter is investigated in the phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) model results and then compared to that in the phase 3 (CMIP3) results. In particular, the role played by the differences among models in ENSO properties, including the amplitude and longitudinal extension of ENSO’s sea surface temperature (SST) pattern, is analyzed. Results show that an eastward shrinking of ENSO’s SST pattern leads to quite weak circulation and climatic responses over the EAWP regions in the models. On the contrary, a westward expansion of the SST pattern shifts the anomalous Walker circulation too far west. The resultant precipitation anomalies and lower-tropospheric atmospheric Rossby wave responses both extend unrealistically into the Indian Ocean, and the hemispheric asymmetry of the Rossby wave response is missing. All these features lead to unrealistic climatic impacts of ENSO over the EAWP regions. In contrast to the above two cases, a reasonable longitudinal extension of ENSO’s SST pattern corresponds to better ENSO teleconnections over the EAWP regions. Nevertheless, the atmospheric responses over the western Pacific are still located farther west than observed, implying a common bias of CMIP5 models. In this case, a larger amplitude of ENSO variability to some extent helps to reduce model biases and facilitate better climatic responses to ENSO in the EAWP regions. Compared with CMIP3 models, CMIP5 models perform better in representing ENSO’s impacts on the East Asian winter climate.

The impacts of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the northwest Pacific (NWP) climate during ENSO decay summers are investigated based on the outputs of 37 coupled general circulation models (CGCMs) from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Large intermodel spread exists in the 37 state-of-the-art CGCMs in simulating the ENSO–NWP relationship. Eight high-skill and eight low-skill models are selected to explore how the bias arises. By comparing the results among high-skill models, low-skill models, and observations, the simulation skill of the ENSO–NWP relationship largely depends on whether the model can reasonably reproduce the ENSO decay pace. Warm SST anomaly bias in the equatorial western Pacific (EWP) is found to persist into the ENSO decay summer in the low-skill models, obstructing the formation of an anomalous anticyclone in the NWP. Further analysis shows that the warm EWP SST anomaly bias is possibly related to the excessive westward extension of cold tongue in these models, which increases climatological zonal SST gradient in the EWP. Under westerly wind anomalies, the larger climatological zonal SST gradient could lead to warmer zonal advections in the low-skill models than that in the high-skill models, which could lead to warm EWP SST anomaly bias in the low-skill models. And the warm EWP SST anomaly bias could strengthen westerly wind anomalies over the western Pacific by triggering convection and atmospheric Rossby waves, which, in turn, could maintain the warm SST anomaly bias in the EWP.

On the basis of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) models, this study have examined the ability of models to capture the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-Indian Ocean Basin Mode (IOBM) relationship, and investigated the characteristics of interdecadal change of ENSO-IOBM relationship as well as the response of the ENSO-IOBM relationship to the global warming. Among 23 CMIP5 models, the capability of models in representing the IOBM depends largely on the simulation of ENSO. Moreover, half of the models can reproduce the unstable ENSO-IOBM relationship. Considering the simulations of ENSO, ENSO-IOBM relationship and interdecadal change, 6 of 23 CMIP5 models are chosen for further investigation. The interdecadal change of ENSO-IOBM relationship is relative to the three ENSO-related processes. During the high correlation (HC) period, the tropospheric temperature (TT) mechanism, oceanic Rossby waves and antisymmetric wind pattern are strong, prolonging the persistence of IOBM. In comparison, during the low correlation (LC) period, the three processes are weak. The results show that the shallow thermocline in the southwestern Indian Ocean (SWIO), increased interannual variability and prolonged periodicity of ENSO are all responsible for the interdecadal change.Furthermore, the possible changes of ENSO-IOBM relationship in the future are investigated. The ENSO-related tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) warming is strengthened under global warming. Despite the deepened thermocline over SWIO and unchanged ENSO activity, the ENSO-related TIO warming is strengthened by the enhanced TT mechanism, which is caused by the increased saturated specific humidity. The results reveal that there is more downward net heat flux (NHF) over the TIO, which is conducive to the TIO warming, and the latent heat flux (LHF) change makes a great contribution to the NHF change. The weakened upward or strengthened downward LHF is possibly due to the decreased anomalous sea-air temperature difference by strengthened TT mechanism.

The multidecadal fluctuations in the patterns and teleconnections of the winter mean Arctic Oscillation (AO) are investigated based on observational and reanalysis datasets. Results show that the Atlantic center of the AO pattern remains unchanged throughout the period 1920–2010, whereas the Pacific center of the AO is strong during 1920–59 and 1986–2010 and weak during 1960–85. Consequently, the link between the AO and the surface air temperature over western North America is strong during 1920–59 and 1986–2010 and weak during 1960–85. The time-varying Pacific center of the AO motivates a revisit to the nature of the AO from the perspective of decadal change. It reveals that the North Pacific mode (NPM) and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) are the inherent regional atmospheric modes over the North Pacific and North Atlantic, respectively. Their patterns over the North Pacific and North Atlantic remain stable and change little with time during 1920–2010. The Atlantic center of the AO always resembles the NAO over the North Atlantic, but the Pacific center of the AO only resembles the NPM over the North Pacific when the NPM–NAO coupling is strong. These results suggest that the AO seems to be fundamentally rooted in the variability over the North Atlantic and that the annular structure of the AO very likely arises from the coupling of the atmospheric modes between the North Pacific and North Atlantic.

Distinct biases are found in the pattern and teleconnections of the Arctic Oscillation (AO) in 32 climate models that participate the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Compared with observations, the Pacific (Atlantic) center of AO is excessively strong (weak) in most of the 32 CMIP5 models, and the AO-related surface air temperature anomalies are generally weak over the Eurasian continent and North America. These biases are closely tied to the excessively strong linkage, which is marginal in observations, between AO and the North Pacific mode (NPM)-the leading variability of the North Pacific sea level pressure. It implies that the AO in CMIP5 models may be compounded with some regional mode over the North Pacific. Accordingly, a bias-correction method was proposed via correcting the AO index (AOI) to improve the diagnostic estimates of the AO teleconnections. The results suggest that the biases in the pattern and teleconnections of AO can be significantly reduced when the NPM variability is linearly removed from the AOI.

Previous studies have revealed some common biases in coupled general circulation model's simulations of the East Asian (EA) winter monsoon (EAWM), including colder surface air temperature and more winter precipitation over the EA region. In this study, we examined 41 fully coupled atmosphere-ocean models from fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), which will be widely used in the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and address whether the current state-of-the-art CMIP5 models can characterise the climatology of the East Asian winter monsoon. We also compared the results with the models from third phase of CMIP, which was extensively used in the fourth assessment report of the IPCC. The results show that the cold surface air temperature (SAT) bias is lessened and the precipitation amount decreased with the current CMIP5 models. Moreover, the CMIP5 models performbetter at predicting surface winds and high-level jet streams than the CMIP3 models. Moreover, CMIP5 models show more model consistency in most EAWM parameters, and the interannual variability of the SAT is closer to the observations. We also examined the change in the radiation energy budget in the CMIP5 models and compared with CMIP3 models. Although the improvements are significant, deficiencies still exist in the simulation of the EAWM, e.g., the stronger EA major trough and the stronger zonal sea level pressure gradient.