Unraveling the Global Teleconnections of Indian Summer Monsoon Clouds: Expedition from CMIP5 to CMIP6

Abstract: We have analyzed the teleconnection of total cloud fraction (TCF) with global sea surface temperature (SST) in multi-model ensembles (MME) of the fifth and sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIP5 and CMIP6). CMIP6-MME has a more robust and realistic teleconnection (TCF and global SST) pattern over the extra-tropics (R ~0.43) and North Atlantic (R ~0.39) region, which in turn resulted in improvement of rainfall bias over the Asian summer monsoon (ASM) region. CMIP6-MME can better reproduce the mean TCF and have reduced dry (wet) rainfall bias on land (ocean) over the ASM region. CMIP6-MME has improved the biases of seasonal mean rainfall, TCF, and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) over the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) region by ~40%, ~45%, and ~31%, respectively, than CMIP5-MME and demonstrates better spatial correlation with observation/reanalysis. Results establish the credibility of the CMIP6 models and provide a scientific basis for improving the seasonal prediction of ISM.