How Well Do CMIP6 Climate Models Simulate the Cold Air Outbreaks in East Asia?

Abstract East Asian cold air outbreaks (CAOs) significantly impact agriculture, industry, transportation, and other socioeconomic activities. This study employs a three-dimensional detection technique and self-organizing maps to classify East Asian CAOs into three types: northern type (NT), central type (CT), and southern type (ST). The NT features cold anomalies over northeast Asia with weak warm anomalies in southwest East Asia. The CT shows cold anomalies centered in northern China. The ST features cold anomalies over central and southern China. While the NT and CT are reasonably well simulated, models show greater difficulty in reproducing the ST. It is further found that the NT occurs under the negative Arctic Oscillation (AO) phase, which is associated with the downward propagation of stratospheric disturbances, enhancing positive geopotential height anomalies along northern Russia…