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Assessment of CMIP5 historical simulations of rainfall over Southeast Asia

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Abstract

We present preliminary analyses of the historical (1986–2005) climate simulations of a ten-member subset of the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) global climate models over Southeast Asia. The objective of this study was to evaluate the general circulation models’ performance in simulating the mean state of climate over this less-studied climate vulnerable region, with a focus on precipitation. Results indicate that most of the models are unable to reproduce the observed state of climate over Southeast Asia. Though the multi-model ensemble mean is a better representation of the observations, the uncertainties in the individual models are far high. There is no particular model that performed well in simulating the historical climate of Southeast Asia. There seems to be no significant influence of the spatial resolutions of the models on the quality of simulation, despite the view that higher resolution models fare better. The study results emphasize on careful consideration of models for impact studies and the need to improve the next generation of models in their ability to simulate regional climates better.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tropical Marine Science Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Srivatsan V Raghavan, Jiandong Liu, Ngoc Son Nguyen, Minh Tue Vu & Shie-Yui Liong

  2. Center for Environmental Sensing and Modeling, SMART, Singapore, Singapore

    Srivatsan V Raghavan, Ngoc Son Nguyen, Minh Tue Vu & Shie-Yui Liong

  3. Center for Hazards Research, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Srivatsan V Raghavan, Jiandong Liu, Ngoc Son Nguyen, Minh Tue Vu & Shie-Yui Liong

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  1. Srivatsan V Raghavan
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  2. Jiandong Liu
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Correspondence to Srivatsan V Raghavan.

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Raghavan, S.V., Liu, J., Nguyen, N.S. et al. Assessment of CMIP5 historical simulations of rainfall over Southeast Asia. Theor Appl Climatol 132, 989–1002 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-017-2111-z

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