Simulation of Precipitation in Monsoon Regions of China by CMIP3 Models

The output of 25 models used in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3) were evaluated, with a focus on summer precipitation in eastern China for the last 40 years of the 20th century. Most models failed to reproduce rainfall associated with the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM), and hence the seasonal cycle in eastern China, but provided reasonable results in Southwest (SW) and Northeast China (NE). The simulations produced reasonable results for the Yangtze-Huai (YH) Basin area, although the Meiyu phenomenon was underestimated in general. One typical regional phenomenon, a seasonal northward shift in the rain belt from early to late summer, was completely missed by most models. The long-term climate trends in rainfall over eastern China were largely underestimated, and the observed geographical pattern of rainfall changes was not reproduced by most models. Precipitation extremes were evaluated via parameters of fitted GEV (Generalized Extreme Values) distributions. The annual extremes were grossly underestimated in the monsoon-dominated YH and SW regions, but reasonable values were calculated for the North China (NC) and NE regions. These results suggest a general failure to capture the dynamics of the EASM in current coupled climate models. Nonetheless, models with higher resolution tend to reproduce larger decadal trends and annual extremes of precipitation in the regions studied.