An assessment of improvements in global monsoon precipitation simulation in FGOALS-s2

Abstract

The performance of Version 2 of the Flexible Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System model (FGOALS-s2) in simulating global monsoon precipitation (GMP) was evaluated. Compared with FGOALS-s1, higher skill in simulating the annual modes of climatological tropical precipitation and interannual variations of GMP are seen in FGOALS-s2. The simulated domains of the northwestern Pacific monsoon (NWPM) and North American monsoon are smaller than in FGOALS-s1. The main deficiency of FGOALS-s2 is that the NWPM has a weaker monsoon mode and stronger negative pattern in spring-fall asymmetric mode. The smaller NWPM domain in FGOALS-s2 is due to its simulated colder SST over the western Pacific warm pool. The relationship between ENSO and GMP is simulated reasonably by FGOALS-s2. However, the simulated precipitation anomaly over the South African monsoon region-South Indian Ocean during La Nina years is opposite to the observation. This results mainly from weaker warm SST anomaly over the maritime continent during La Nina years, leading to stronger upper-troposphere (lower-troposphere) divergence (convergence) over the Indian Ocean, and artificial vertical ascent (descent) over the Southwest Indian Ocean (South African monsoon region), inducing local excessive (deficient) rainfall. Comparison between the historical and pre-industrial simulations indicated that global land monsoon precipitation changes from 1901 to the 1970s were caused by internal variation of climate system. External forcing may have contributed to the increasing trend of the Australian monsoon since the 1980s. Finally, it shows that global warming could enhance GMP, especially over the northern hemispheric ocean monsoon and southern hemispheric land monsoon.