Abstract
Water vapour in the UTLS is a key radiative agent and a crucial factor in the Earth's climate system. Here, we investigate a common regional moist bias in the Pacific UTLS during northern summer in state-of-the-art climate models. We demonstrate, through a combination of climate model experiments and satellite observations that the Pacific moist bias amplifies local longwave cooling which ultimately impacts regional circulation systems in the UTLS. Related impacts involve a strengthening of isentropic potential vorticity gradients, strengthened westerlies in the Pacific westerly duct region, and a zonally displaced anticyclonic monsoon circulation. Furthermore, we show that the regional Pacific moist bias can be significantly reduced by applying a Lagrangian, less diffusive transport scheme and that such a model improvement could be important for improving the simulation of regional circulation systems, in particular in the Asian monsoon and Pacific region.  
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