East Asian summer precipitation in AWI-CM3: Comparison with observations and CMIP6 models

Owing to the complicated spatial-temporal characteristics of East Asian precipitation (EAP), climate models have limited skills in simulating the modern Asian climate. This consequently leads to large uncertainties in simulations of the past EAP variation and future projections. Here, we explore the performance of the newly developed Alfred Wegener Institute Climate Model, version 3 (AWI-CM3) in simulating the climatological summer EAP. To test whether the model’s skill depends on its atmosphere resolution, we design two AWI-CM3 simulations with different horizontal resolutions. The result shows that both simulations have acceptable performance in simulating the summer mean EAP, generally better than the majority of individual models participating in the Climate Modelling Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). However, for the monthly EAP from June to August, AWI-CM3 exhibits a decayed skill, which is due to the sub-seasonal movement of the western Pacific subtropical high bias. The higher resolution AWI-CM3 simulation shows an overall improvement relative to the one performed at a relatively lower resolution in all aspects taken into account regarding the EAP. We conclude that AWI-CM3 is a suitable tool for exploring the EAP for the observational period. Having verified the model’s skill for modern climate, we suggest employing the AWI-CM3, especially with high atmosphere resolution, also for applications in paleoclimate studies and future projections.