Analysis of the decadal and interdecadal variations of the east asian winter monsoon as simulated by 20 coupled models in IPCC AR4

Using the output data of 20 coupled climate models used in IPCC AR4 and observational data from NCEP, the capability of the models to simulate the boreal winter climatology of the East Asian sea level pressure, 850-hPa wind, and surface air temperature; the decadal variations of the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) intensity and EAWM-related circulation, and the interdecadal variations of EAWM-related circulation are systematically evaluated. The results indicate that 16 models can weakly simulate the declining trend of the EAWM in the 1980s. More than half of the models produce relatively reasonable decadal variations of the EAWM-related circulation and the interdecadal differences of EAWM-related circulation between the boreal winters of 1960–1985 and 1986–1998, including the weakened Siberian high, Aleutian low, and East Asian trough, the enhanced Arctic oscillation and North Pacific oscillation, and a deepened polar vortex. It is found that the performance of the multi-selected-model ensemble in reproducing the spatial distribution of the variations is encouraging, although the variational amplitudes are generally smaller than the observations. In addition, it is found that BCCR-BCM2.0, CGCM3.1-T63, CNRM-CM3, CSIRO-MK3.0, GISS-ER, INM-CM3.0, and MRI-CGCM2.3.2 perform well in every aspect.