Consistent responses of East Asian summer mean rainfall to global warming in CMIP5 simulations

East Asia summer rainfall is of great social–economic importance. Based on observations, reanalysis and simulations of 16 Coupled Models Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) models, the responses of East Asia summer precipitation, as well as some relevant features, to global warming are investigated. The CMIP5 historical simulation reasonably reproduces the climatology of summer rainfall, the associated circulation, the moisture and its transportation, and the mid-troposphere horizontal advection of temperature as well. Under global warming, the rainfall enhancement is robustly projected in the state-of-the-art models over North China, Northeast China, northern coast of Japan and the Kuroshio. As well, the total summer rainfall over East Asia is consistently increased in the models. For the consistent responses, the moisture budget analysis based on the simulations shows that two factors are responsible: one is increased moisture. As East Asia is a climatological ascent region in northern summer, increased moisture induced by global warming leads to more moisture transported upward and thus the rainfall rise. The other is enhanced evaporation, which may be caused by surface warming and provides more precipitable water to the atmosphere column. Furthermore, the results may provide some implications to the long-term variability of East Asia summer rainfall over the last several decades.