Abstract
This study examines the representation of the multi-scale temporospatial variability of the East Asian summer monsoon stationary front (MSF) in the High-Resolution Atmospheric Model (HiRAM) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Compared with the observed variability of the MSF in the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis Interim (ERA-Interim), HiRAM reproduces reasonably well the seasonal mean precipitation pattern and the seasonal migration of MSF. However, wet biases are found over the northern and eastern China and northern Japan, and dry biases extend from the southern China to the western North Pacific. These rainfall biases are directly tied to a northwestward bias in the model simulated seasonal mean location of MSF and this location bias is most pronounced in the month of May. In general, the MSF in HiRAM is more intense, located more northwestward, and more stationary with weaker interannual variations compared to the observed. A pronounced positive bias in the ocean-land sea level pressure contrast over East Asia, largely manifested as the westward expansion of the western North Pacific subtropical high, is hypothesized to be the main cause of the northwestward location bias of MSF in HiRAM. This bias in sea level pressure contrast likely results from the missing of realistic air-sea interactions in the HiRAM simulations.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers whose constructive comments are helpful for improving the overall quality of the paper. This study is supported by the National Key Scientific Research Plan of China (Grant 2014CB953900), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 91637208 and 41661144019), the “111-Plan” Project of China (Grant B17049), and the Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Climate Change. Yi Deng is partly supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Climate and Large-Scale Dynamics (CLD) program through grants AGS-1354402 and AGS-1445956, and by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) through award NA16NWS4680013. Zhaoyi Shen is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce under Award NA14OAR4320106. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or the U.S. Department of Commerce. The HiRAM data are obtained from the NOAA GFDL and the observational data used in this study came from the NOAA CPC and European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/research/climate-reanalysis/era-interim).
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Li, Y., Deng, Y., Yang, S. et al. Multi-scale temporal-spatial variability of the East Asian summer monsoon frontal system: observation versus its representation in the GFDL HiRAM. Clim Dyn 52, 6787–6798 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-018-4546-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-018-4546-z