The Annual Modes of Tropical Precipitation Simulated by the LASG/IAP Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Model FGOALS_s1.1

This paper evaluates the performance of a coupled general circulation model FGOALS?s1.1 developed by LASG/IAP in simulating the annual modes of tropical precipitation. To understand the impacts of air-sea coupling on the annual modes, the result of an off-line simulation of the atmospheric component of FGOALS?s1.1, i.e., LASG/IAP atmospheric general circulation model SAMIL, is also analyzed. FGOALS?s1.1 can reasonably reproduce major characteristics of the annual mean precipitation. Nonethe- less, the coupled model shows overestimation of precipitation over the equatorial Pacific and tropical South Pacific, and underestimation of precipitation over the northern equatorial Pacific. The monsoon mode simulated by FGOALS?s1.1 shows an equatorial anti-symmetric structure, which is consistent with the observation. The bias of the coupled model in simulating monsoon mode resembles that of SAMIL,especiallyover the subtropics. The main deficiency of FGOALS?s1.1 is its failure in simulating the spring-fall asymmetric mode.This is attributed to the false phase of sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) annual cycle over the equatorial central-eastern Pacific and Indian Ocean, which leads to the bias of the Walker circulation over the equatorial Pacific and the anti-Walker circulation over the Indian Ocean in boreal spring and fall.In addition,the domains of the western North Pacific monsoon and Indian monsoon simulated by the coupled model are smaller than the observation. The study suggests that the bias of the fully coupled ocean-atmosphere model can only be partly attributed to the bias of the atmospheric component. The performance of FGOALS?s1.1 in simulating the annual cycle of equatorial SST deserves further improvement.