Climatic features related to Eastern China summer rainfalls in the NCAR CCM3

The climatic features associated with the eastern China summer rainfalls (ECSR) are examined in the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Climate Model Version 3 (CCM3) of the United States of America, and run with time-evolving sea surface temperature (SST) from September 1978 to August 1993. The CCM3 is shown to capture the salient seasonal features of ECSR. As many other cli-mate models, however, there are some unrealistic projections of ECSR in the CCM3. The most unacceptable one is the erroneously intensified precipitation center on the east periphery of the Tibetan Plateau and its northeastward extension.The artificial strong rainfall center is fairly assessed by comparing with the products of the station rainfall data. Xie and Arkin (1996) rainfall data and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Fore-casts (ECMWF) reanalysis (Gibson et al., 1997). The physical processes involved in the formation of the rainfall center are discussed. The preliminary conclusion reveals that it is the overestimated sensible heating over and around the Tibetan Plateau in the CCM3 that causes the heavy rainfall. The unreal strong surface sensible heating over the southeast and northeast of Tibetan Plateau favors the forming of a powerful subtropical anticyclone over the eastern China. The fake enclosed subtropical anticyclone center makes the moist southwest wind festen on the east periphery of the Tibetan Plateau and extend to its northeast. In the southeast coast of China, locating on the southeast side of the subtropical anticyclone, the southwest mon-soon is decreased and even replaced by northeast wind in some cases. In the CCM3, therefore, the precipita-tion is exaggerated on the east periphery of the Tibetan Plateau and its northeast extension and is underestimated in the southeast coast of China.