An ensemble of regional climate simulations from the Coordinated Regional
Downscaling Experiment in East Asia (CORDEX-East Asia) was analysed to
evaluate the ability of 5 regional climate models (RCMs) and their ensemble
mean in reproducing the key features of present- day precipitation
(1989−2008). We emphasised (1) an extreme rainfall event, (2) seasonal
climatology, (3) annual cycles and inter-annual variability and (4) the
monsoon characteristics. We highlighted 4 sub-monsoon regions, viz. South
Asian Summer Monsoon (SAS), the East Asian Summer Monsoon (EAS), the Western
North Pacific Tropical Monsoon (WNP) and the Australian- Maritime Continent
Monsoon (AUSMC). We found that the RCMs showed a reasonable performance to
capture the extreme rainfall event in 1998. The RCMs simulated the seasonal
mean, annual cycle and inter-annual variability acceptably. However,
individual models exhibited significant biases in some sub-regions and
seasons. Moreover, most of the RCMs significantly improved their performance
in capturing precipitation climatology and monsoon characteristics over the
Korean Peninsula, the Korea Strait and southern Japan. Based upon this
performance study, we conclude that the present set of RCMs from CORDEX can be
used to provide useful information on climate projections over East Asia