Simulated interannual variation in summertime atmospheric circulation associated with the East Asian monsoon

The reproducibility of the interannual variability of the summertime East Asian circulation is examined using an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM). An ensemble experiment is conducted using observed sea surface temperature (SST) of recent 20 years as a lower boundary condition. The spatial pattern associated with the first principal mode of observation of geopotential height at 500 hPa is characterized by a meridional wavy pattern extending over eastern Siberia, the vicinity of Japan and the subtropical western Pacific. The principal component (PC) time series of the leading mode is represented well by a high-resolution version of the AGCM with horizontal resolution T106 and with 56 vertical levels (T106L56), while with a lower resolution version, T42 and 20 vertical levels, the reproducibility is considerably degraded. The reproducibility by the AGCM suggests the importance of SST as a boundary condition. However, the simulated interannual variations show the alternating appearance of two distinct circulation regimes, a cold summer regime and a hot summer regime, exhibiting interesting bimodality in probability density distribution in PC phase space. This implies that the system’s response to the continuously varying boundary condition includes nonlinearity. The nature of this nonlinearity is suggested to be wave breaking in the westerly region of the high latitudes that requires high resolution for the reproduction. Using the T106L56 model, another ensemble experiment was carried out with doubled CO₂. The climate change appears as an increase in residence frequency of the cold summer regime of the principal patterns of the present-day climate. This paper is a contribution to the AMIP-CMIP Diagnostic Sub-project on General Circulation Model Simulation of the East Asian Climate, coordinated by W.-C. Wang.