Impact of horizontal resolution on the simulation of the Asian summer monsoon and tropical cyclones in the JMA global model

To investigate the impact of increasing horizontal resolution on a simulated model climate, we conducted an experiment using the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) operational global atmosphere model (JMA-GSM0103). The models with four different horizontal resolutions ranging from T42 to T213 have been integrated over three years with prescribed climate sea surface temperature in the experiment. The distributions of 3-year averaged seasonal mean fields are basically similar among the models with different resolution, although there are some monotonic and systematic differences with increasing resolution. However, the climatology of synoptic scale phenomena is well represented in higher resolution models. The position and amount of precipitation in Baiu front (or “Mei-yu”) at higher resolution models agree well with observations. The start time of northward propagation of heavy precipitation over the Bay of Bengal, which is associated with Indian monsoon development, is also well simulated in higher resolution models. The number of tropical cyclones increases monotonically with resolutions. The simulated tropical cyclones become more realistic with increasing resolution.