Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Global and Planetary Change journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/gloplacha Research Article Performance of CMIP5 atmospheric general circulation model simulations over the Asian summer monsoon region Venkatraman Prasanna a, ⁎ , Bhaskar Preethi b , Jaiho Oh c , Inwon Kim c , Sumin Woo c a Centre for Climate Research Singapore, Singapore b Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, India c Pukyong National University, Busan, Republic of Korea ARTICLE INFO Keywords: South Asia Western-north Pacific Summer monsoon Interannual variability Atmospheric general circulation models AMIP ABSTRACT Performance of twenty-eight state of art atmosphere general circulation models (AGCMs) in simulating regional characteristic features of summer monsoon rainfall and circulation over the south Asian and the western-north Pacific regions are examined. AGCMs depict good representation of climatological spatial distribution of mon- soon rainfall over both the regions. Interestingly, the year-to-year variability of the south Asian (Indian) mon- soon rainfall is well simulated by the models compared to the circulation features. Whereas, for the western- north Pacific region, the AGCMs depict poor representation of monsoon rainfall variability, but circulation features are simulated with better skill. Thus suggesting that, models with good performance of monsoon rainfall variability need not necessarily have better representation of monsoon circulation features. Further analysis indicate that most models with good skill in simulating monsoon variability have better representation of monsoon-SST teleconnections with the Indo-Pacific SSTs. For the south Asian region, better simulating models have good representation of monsoon-ENSO teleconnection whereas most models have poor representation of monsoon-IOD relationship, suggesting requirement for realistic representation of these teleconnections in the models. For the western-north Pacific region, most models have unrealistic relationship of monsoon rainfall with SSTs during preceding winter and concurrent monsoon season, indicating that the poor (better) skill in simu- lating rainfall (circulation) probably arise from the unrealistic (realistic) representation of monsoon-SST tele- connections. Thus, the importance of realistic representation of monsoon-SST teleconnections in the climate models have been brought out for better simulation of monsoon variability over the south Asian and the western- north Pacific regions. 1. Introduction The Asian summer monsoon is the main rain bearing climate system on the living planet, which directly or indirectly influences the liveli- hood of 2/3 of the world's population. Any change or variability in the system can have profound impact on the society (e.g. food production, drinking water, etc.). The region of south Asia, particularly the Indian sub-continent, has a geographical location with unique physical, cul- tural and economic characteristics, whose destiny is tied to the Asian summer monsoon. Most parts of India receive a major proportion, more than 70%, of their annual rainfall during the summer (June to September) monsoon season (Rao, 1976; Parthasarathy et al., 1994; Pant and Rupakumar, 1997; Prasanna and Yasunari, 2009). However, the southern peninsular region receives rainfall during the winter (October to December) monsoon season as well (Dhar and Rakhecha, 1983; Prasanna and Yasunari, 2008). Extreme departures from normal seasonal rainfall, such as large-scale droughts and floods, exhibit sig- nificant impact on the gross domestic product (GDP), agricultural production (Gadgil, 1995; Webster et al., 1998; Gadgil et al., 1999; Prasanna, 2014) and regional economies (Swaminathan, 1987; Gadgil, 1995; Gadgil et al., 1999). Therefore, the prediction of the south Asian monsoon is very essential for GDP growth and sustainable development over this region. Thus it is imperative to put in efforts to predict the spatial as well as temporal variabilities in monsoon. The year-to-year fluctuation is one of the most prominent variations of the south Asian monsoon. The years with deficit (excess) monsoon rainfall is strongly related to deficient (surplus) food productivity (Gadgil and Gadgil, 2006; Prasanna, 2014). A modest decrease of 10% of long term mean rainfall leads to significant decrease in rice pro- duction over India (Abrol and Gadgil, 1999). It has been recognized https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2020.103298 Received 8 June 2019; Received in revised form 9 July 2020; Accepted 18 August 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: prasa_arnala@yahoo.com (V. Prasanna). Global and Planetary Change 194 (2020) 103298 Available online 26 August 2020 0921-8181/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T