Characteristics of East Asian Cold Surges in the CMIP5 Climate Models

The cold surges over East Asia can be grouped to two types of the wave-train and the blocking. Recently, the observational study proposed new dynamical index to objectively identify cold surge types. In this study, the dynamical index is applied to the simulations of 10 climate models, which participate in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Focusing on assessment of cold surge simulation, we discuss characteristic of the wave-train and blocking cold surges in the climate models. The wave-train index (WI) and the blocking index (BI) based on potential temperature anomalies at dynamical tropopause over the subarctic region, the northeast China, and the western North Pacific enable us to classify cold surges in the climate models into two types. The climate models well simulate the occurrence mechanism of the wave-train cold surges with vertical structure related to growing baroclinic wave. However, while the wave-train in the observation propagates in west-east direction across the Eurasia Continent, most of the models simulate the southeastward propagation of the wave-train originated from the Kara Sea. For the blocking cold surges, the general features in the climate models well follow those in the observation to show the dipole pattern of a barotropic high-latitude blocking and a baroclinic coastal trough, leading to the Arctic cold surges with the strong northerly wind originated from the Arctic Sea. In both of the observation and climate models, the blocking cold surges tend to be more intense and last longer compared to the wave-train type.

CMIP5 기후 모형에서 나타나는 동아시아 한파의 특징