Li et al. (2025) Mechanistic Insights Into Regional Air‐Sea Coupling Effects on East Asian Summer Climate: A Comparative Modeling Study With a New Regional Earth System Model

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-12-26
• Authors: Kai Li, L. C. Dan, L. J. Zou, H. Z. Zheng, Zhongfeng Xu, Jianping Tang, Jing Peng, Ziyan Zheng, Fuqiang Yang, Wei Pan, Zong‐liang Yang
• DOI: 10.1029/2025jd044975

Research Groups

• Not specified in the provided text.

Short Summary

This study enhances the mechanistic understanding of regional air-sea coupling's influence on East Asian summer climate by comparing coupled (RIEMS) and uncoupled (WRF) regional models. It finds that RIEMS significantly improves simulations of air temperature and heat fluxes compared to WRF and global models, demonstrating the critical role of regional air-sea coupling.

Objective

• To enhance the mechanistic understanding of how regional air-sea coupling influences East Asian summer climate.
• To evaluate the performance of a new Regional Integrated Earth Model System (RIEMS) with air-sea coupling against its standalone atmospheric component (WRF) and global climate models in reproducing East Asian summer climate.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: East Asia, particularly East China.
• Temporal Scale: Long-term simulations covering 1991–2014, focusing on summer climate.

Methodology and Data

• Models used:
  • Regional Integrated Earth Model System (RIEMS) with air-sea coupling.
  • Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model (standalone atmospheric model).
  • Ensemble mean of global climate models (ENS) for comparison.
• Data sources:
  • Implied comparison to observed climate; specific observational or reanalysis data sources are not detailed in the abstract.

Main Results

• Both RIEMS and WRF demonstrate advantages and added values in reproducing summer air temperature (T2mean and T2max) and precipitation compared to the ensemble mean of global climate models (ENS).
• RIEMS better reproduces T2mean and T2max compared to WRF, particularly over East China.
• RIEMS reduces the T2max warm bias found in WRF by 0.7 °C on average over land.
• RIEMS offers more accurate simulations of surface sensible and latent heat fluxes.
• WRF overestimates sensible heat flux by nearly 7.0 W m⁻² over land.
• Mechanistic analyses indicate that WRF reproduces less cloud cover and increased incoming shortwave radiation, leading to higher sensible heat flux and warmer air temperature.
• The climatological decrease in cloud cover in WRF can be attributed to its warmer air temperature.
• WRF simulated less outgoing shortwave radiation and trapped more longwave radiation, contributing to warmer surface air temperature.
• Without air-sea coupling, WRF strengthened water and energy transportation from ocean to land through a stronger southwesterly airflow, which is more conducive to simulating higher surface air temperatures in WRF over a large area.

Contributions

• Provides mechanistic evidence that regional air-sea coupling is essential for credible climate simulations and projections over East Asia.
• Enhances the mechanistic understanding of regional air-sea coupling processes and their impact on East Asian summer climate.
• Demonstrates the improved performance of a new coupled regional Earth model system (RIEMS) in simulating key climate variables over East Asia.

Funding

• Not specified in the provided text.

Citation

@article{Li2025Mechanistic,
  author = {Li, Kai and Dan, L. C. and Zou, L. J. and Zheng, H. Z. and Xu, Zhongfeng and Tang, Jianping and Peng, Jing and Zheng, Ziyan and Yang, Fuqiang and Pan, Wei and Yang, Zong‐liang},
  title = {Mechanistic Insights Into Regional Air‐Sea Coupling Effects on East Asian Summer Climate: A Comparative Modeling Study With a New Regional Earth System Model},
  journal = {Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1029/2025jd044975},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1029/2025jd044975}
}