Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Atmospheric Research
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atmosres

Evaluation of CMIP6 GCMs performance to simulate precipitation over

Southeast Asia
Sittichai Pimonsree a, Suchada Kamworapan b, Shabbir H. Gheewala c, d,
Amornpong Thongbhakdi e, Kritana Prueksakorn b, *
a
Atmospheric Pollution and Climate Change Research Unit, School of Energy and Environment, University of Phayao, Phayao 56000, Thailand
b
Faculty of Environment and Resource Studies, Mahidol University, Nakhon Phathom 73170, Thailand
c
Joint Graduate School of Energy and Environment (JGSEE), King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), Bangkok 10140, Thailand
d
Center of Excellence on Energy Technology and Environment (CEE), Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation, Bangkok, Thailand
e
SCGP, 1 Siam Cement Road, Bangkok 10800, Thailand

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The performance for simulating precipitation of 27 global climate models (GCMs) participating in the Coupled
Global climate models Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) is evaluated over the Southeast Asia (SEA) region and nine SEA
CMIP6 countries for the period 1975–2014 by comparing observation data from the Global Precipitation Climatology
Precipitation
Centre (GPCC). The performance ranking of the GCMs was conducted with the ranking scores method using eight
Model ranking
Southeast Asia
performance metrics that cover both spatial and temporal patterns. Compared to GPCC, the results show that
some GCMs in CMIP6 reasonably capture the spatial precipitation patterns, with more in maritime and less in
mainland. However, the output of most models presents considerable overestimation (wet bias) in Thailand,
Cambodia, central Myanmar and maritime countries, and underestimation (dry bias) in Indonesia, Lao, northern
Vietnam and western Myanmar. In addition, the findings illustrate that many models can reproduce the annual
cycle shape and inter-annual variability which are consistent with GPCC; however, only 2 out of 27 models can
detect increasing trends such as GPCC in every study domain. By model ranking, the best models vary from area
domain to area domain. TaiESM1 performs best among the 27 GCMs over SEA region as well as Thailand. The
model that has the best performance in most counties, i.e., Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, and Vietnam is EC-Earth3-
Veg-LR. EC-Earth3 is the best model in Brunei, Malaysia while CESM2-FV2 is the best model in Myanmar and the
Philippines. It is also discovered that the mean ensemble of all GCMs has limited skills for all study domains. The
results of this study can be used to support selection of the suitable models for simulating precipitation in specific
study domains.

1. Introduction rainfall variability (Tan and Pereira, 2010). According to Santhanasamy

Precipitation is one of the most important factors influencing the
existence of humans, plants, animals and the natural environment.
Variations in precipitation contribute to changes in magnitude and
spatiotemporal patterns (Yazdandoost et al., 2021). Southeast Asia
(SEA) is one of the regions most affected by natural disasters related to
et al. (2021), the SEA region faced a number of disasters between 1971
and 2020, including 687 floods, 450 tropical cyclones, 114 landslides,
and 21 droughts and forest fires. Furthermore, the SEA region was
affected by major disasters such as Cyclone Nargis in 2008 and Typhoon
Haiyan (also called Typhoon Yolanda) in 2013 (Santhanasamy et al.,
2021). These precipitation-related natural disasters have caused

Abbreviations: APHRODITE, Asian Precipitation – Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation; CMIP, Coupled Model Intercomparison
Project; CMIP5, Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5; CMIP6, Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6; CRU, Climatic Research Unit; CV, Co­
efficient of Variation; ESGF, Earth System Grid Federation; GCMs, Global climate models; GPCC, Global Precipitation Climatology Centre; MA, Mean Annual; MBE,
Mean Bias Error; mm, Millimeter; r, Correlation Coefficient; RMSE, Root Mean Square Error; RS, Ranking Scores; rs, Spatial Correlation Coefficient; rt, Temporal
Correlation Coefficient; SEA, Southeast Asia; SeasonAmp, Mean Seasonal Cycle Amplitude; SST, Sea Surface Temperature; SWSA, Southwestern South America; ◦ E,
Degrees East; ◦ N, Degrees North; ◦ S, Degrees South; 27- MODEL ENSEMBLE, Multi-Model Ensemble of 27 Models.
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: kritana.pru@mahidol.ac.th (K. Prueksakorn).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2022.106522
Received 27 August 2022; Received in revised form 13 November 2022; Accepted 16 November 2022
Available online 19 November 2022
0169-8095/© 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
S. Pimonsree et al.
significant environmental, economic, and human losses (Alam et al.,
2018). To be prepared for fluctuating climate change and future natural
disasters, reliable and efficient tools for analyzing trends and changes in
precipitation are needed.
Global climate models (GCMs), also known as general circulation
models, are a useful tool widely applied to study and understand the
Earth’s climate system in the past, present, and future (Guo et al., 2021;
Yazdandoost et al., 2021). GCMs are numerical models representing
processes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, land surface and the
interactions among these components (Randall et al., 2007) which are
based on physical, chemical, and biological principles (Goosse et al.,
2010). In 1995, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) was
established to collect GCMs and define the scope and parameters to
standardize all GCMs (Meehl et al., 2005; Eyring et al., 2016). CMIP has
continued to evolve to this day and is in its 6th phase or CMIP6 (Eyring
et al., 2016). GCMs under CMIP6 have been improved in several areas
compared to the previous phases (CMIP 1–5) (Eyring et al., 2016) for
example; spatial resolution, physical parameterization, and simulation
of biogeochemical cycles (Hajima et al., 2020; Jiang et al., 2020; Ayugi
et al., 2021). Additionally, calculation efficiency has also been improved
in the current phase to avoid coding errors in the parameterization of
clouds, convection, and turbulence (Hajima et al., 2020). Moreover, new
features, such as land and ocean nitrogen cycles, ice sheet component,
and atmospheric radiation and aerosol parameterizations have been
added in the CMIP6 GCMs (Eyring et al., 2019; Mauritsen et al., 2019;
Kamruzzaman et al., 2021; Ayugi et al., 2021). Eyring et al. (2016) re­
ported that these improvements have made the GCMs in CMIP6 more
efficient in terms of understanding the role of clouds in climate sensi­
tivity and changes in the cryosphere due to climate change and short-
term forecast. For example, compared to CMIP5, CMIP6 GCMs have
shown improvement in predicting the Indian monsoon (Gusain et al.,
2020) and precipitation indices over China (Zhu et al., 2020).
Global climate simulation developers have continued to publish
GCM results under CMIP6 since 2017 (Stouffer et al., 2017; Cui et al.,
2021), and there are currently >70 results of CMIP6 GCMs (ESGF the
Earth System Grid Federation, 2021). The performance of each CMIP6
GCM varies due to model structure, parameterization, initial condition
setting, and differences in climate and topography (Guo et al., 2021;
Wang et al., 2021). The study by Desmet and Ngo-Duc (2022) showed
that despite using the same simulation model, the evaluation results of
precipitation simulations varied from country to country; this was partly
due to the differences in factors affecting precipitation (e.g., season,
distance to the ocean, geographical characteristic, monsoon influence,
mountain ranges, ocean currents), all of which contribute to the effi­
ciency of simulation models (Baede et al., 2001). For this reason, CMIP6
GCMs have been tested in different areas: Globe (Chen et al., 2020),
China (Jiang et al., 2020; Xin et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2021; Zhang
et al., 2022), Central Asia (Guo et al., 2021), Iran (Yazdandoost et al.,
2021), East Asia (Ayugi et al., 2021; Yan et al., 2021), Southwestern
South America (Rivera and Arnould, 2020), North Africa (Babaousmail
et al., 2021), Tibetan Plateau (Cui et al., 2021), United States (Almazroui
et al., 2020), and SEA (Iqbal et al., 2021; Desmet and Ngo-Duc, 2022).
However, Yazdandoost et al. (2021) reported that model performance
may vary due to area scope and geography. For example, Wang et al.
(2021) discovered that CMIP6 GCMs overestimated precipitation in
upstream and underestimated it in the middle of the Yellow River Basin.
Therefore, in addition to evaluating the efficiency of the model within
the area, some studies analyzed a specific area of the study domain. For
example, the location of the Andes Mountain affected the balance of
precipitation volume in the eastern and western parts of the South­
western South America (SWSA); therefore, Rivera and Arnould (2020)
divided the study area into the North SWSA and South SWSA subareas.
The result of the study showed that in most of the simulations, the values
of mean bias error and the root mean square error (RMSE) are higher in
the South SWSA area than in the North SWSA area. The study of Yaz­
dandoost et al. (2021), which used CMIP6 GCMs in 5 climate areas of
2
Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522
Iran, showed noticeable differences between the different climate areas.
Another study by Desmet and Ngo-Duc (2022) showed that monsoon
winds and climatic events cause variations in different SEA regions,
which is why the region is divided into 3 sub-domains: Indochina, the
Maritime Continent and the Philippines. The result of their study
showed that the magnitudes of annual cycles of each sub-domain
significantly contribute to the higher or lower estimated rainfall in
each sub-domain in different periods. There is however a small number
of studies evaluating the efficiency of CMIP6 GCM precipitation simu­
lation in the SEA region or the sub-domain partitioning in the SEA region
(Iqbal et al., 2021; Desmet and Ngo-Duc, 2022). In addition, previous
studies have identified different precipitation trends for countries in
SEA. An increasing trend in precipitation was observed in Vietnam and
the Huai Luang watershed in Thailand, while a decreasing trend in
rainfall was apparent in Cambodia (Phuong et al., 2019; Piman et al.,
2016; Thoeun, 2015). Therefore, an investigation on CMIP6 GCMs that
can provide the most accurate rainfall simulation result for each country
should be conducted.
Recently, CMIP6 GCMs released new simulation data (the time of
starting this research on 31 November 2021) which have not been
entirely evaluated for the SEA region (Iqbal et al., 2021; Desmet and
Ngo-Duc, 2022). The objective of this research is to compare perfor­
mance in simulating precipitation between newly released GCMs and
formerly studied GCMs with good performance. Not only were the
previous evaluations of CMIP6 GCMs in SEA restricted to the mainland
SEA, but they also lacked characteristics, seasonal variations, and
trends. Therefore, the scope of this study covers both mainland and
islands of SEA and evaluates the spatiotemporal precipitation pattern,
seasonal amplitude, fluctuation and trends. The evaluation of CMIP6
GCMs performance to simulate precipitation over SEA and countries in
SEA provides information in deciding which model is suitable for them
for further application of SEA impact assessment and planning for
climate change response effectively.
2. Methodology
2.1. Research flow
The framework of this study consists of 3 steps as shown in Fig. 1:
first, data are collected from 27 GCMs in CMIP6 and Global Precipitation
Climatology Centre (GPCC). All GCMs are then regridded to GPCC grid
resolution before separating study domains into SEA domain and each
country-specific domain. Second, 27 GCMs CMIP6 are evaluated on their
performance to simulate precipitation in each study-domain by
comparing with GPCC through statistics. From the result, GCMs will
then be ranked based on their simulation performance based on results
of all performance values. Last, the performance results of GCMs from
each criterion are compared to assess the compatability between GCMs
and GPCC. The result of the study provides performance ranking among
27 GCMs and most suitable of model group for simulation of precipi­
tation in SEA-domain and each specific country domain.
2.2. Study area
In this study, SEA domain evaluation scope is between latitude 13◦ S
to 29.5◦ N and longitude 90◦ E to 143◦ E as shown in Fig. 2. The main
portion of this domain is located in the tropics and some in the subtro­
pics (Yuen and Kong, 2009), covering a total land area of 4.48 million
km2 (Gupta, 2010). The geography of SEA consists of mainland and
islands. The topography of the area consists of high hills, plateaus, and
mountains (placed in the north and northwest ward of the region and
including some islands in Indonesia and Philippines), river plains
(mostly in the mainland), coastal plains (commonly found in countries
with coastline), and islands (Iqbal et al., 2021; Santhanasamy et al.,
2021). Precipitation in the country located in the mainland is mainly
influenced by the Asian summer monsoon, while that in the island area
S. Pimonsree et al.
Fig. 1. Research framework of this study (RS method: Ranking score method).
Fig. 2. Topography (elevation in meters) of the study area.
is influenced by the Australian summer monsoon and tropical cyclone
(Desmet and Ngo-Duc, 2022). With regards to geography, topography,
and monsoon influence, there is likely significant distinction in precip­
itation from country to country (Rivera and Arnould, 2020; Desmet and
Ngo-Duc, 2022). For these reasons, in order to better evaluate the per­
formance of precipitation simulation, SEA domains are divided into nine
countries: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia, Myanmar,
Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam with the exception of Singapore due
to grid area data). The evaluation results in countries provide decisive
conclusion in the selection of appropriate GCM to simulate precipitation
3
Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522
for specific country.
2.3. CMIP6 models and observation dataset
Since current release of CMIP6 GCMs models have not been fully
evaluated for SEA, this research, therefore, selects recently released
models (before 31 November 2021) to compare with the 5 highest
performing CMIP6 GCMs previously used in SEA region study (Iqbal
et al., 2021; Desmet and Ngo-Duc, 2022). Hence, 27 GCMs in CMIP6
(Table 1) are used in this study area. The monthly precipitation data
from historical simulations of all GCMs are obtained from the Earth
System Grid Federation (ESGF) data portal (ESGF the Earth System Grid
Federation, 2021). Since this study also aims to evaluate the ability of
model in simulating precipitation trend, the chosen time is 1975–2014
during which there was a significant increase in precipitation (IPCC,
2021). The precipitation simulation of all 27 CMIP6 GCMs and multi-
model ensemble of 27 models, called 27- MODEL ENSEMBLE (Eq. (1))
is assessed against the reference dataset.
1∑ n
27 − MODEL ENSEMBLE = GCMi (1)
n i=1
where GCMi is the simulation output of the ith GCM, and n is the total
number of GCMs.
Observation data from Global Precipitation Climatology Centre
(GPCC) are used as the reference dataset in this study. This is a monthly
global land-surface precipitation dataset collected from ~80,000 sta­
tions worldwide that cover the period of 1901–2016. GPCC was selected
according to better performance in reproducing the spatial distribution
of rainfall climatology and their inter-annual variation over the country
in SEA than other grid datasets (CRU and APHRODITE) (Torsri et al.,
2022; Faikrua et al., 2020). GPCC has a spatial resolution of 0.5 degrees
(Schneider et al., 2018). Because the spatial resolution of each CMIP6
GCM is different (Table 1), all models are regridded to GPCC grid res­
olution (0.5◦ × 0.5◦ ) using bilinear interpolation before evaluating the
S. Pimonsree et al. Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522

Table 1 GCM simulation and GPCC. The lower that values of RMSE, the higher is
List of the 27 CMIP6 GCMs used in this study. the performance of the model (Rivera and Arnould, 2020). The rs is
No. Models Institute Resolution calculated to measure the similarity of the gridded spatial patterns of
(long*lat) GCM and GPCC; rs value is between − 1 and 1. According to the criteria
1. ACCESS-CM2 Australian Community Climate and 1.88◦ × 1.25◦ of Hinkle et al. (2003), r ≥ ±0.91 = very high correlation, ±0.71 ≤ r ≤
Earth System Simulator ±0.90 = high correlation, ±0.51 ≤ r ≤ ±0.70 = moderate correlation,
2. AWI-CM-1-1- Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany 0.94◦ × 0.94◦ ±0.31 ≤ r ≤ ±0.50 = weak correlation, and 0 ≤ r ≤ ±0.30 = very weak
MR correlation. These criteria are also used to indicate the degree of spatial
3. AWI-ESM-1- Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany 1.88◦ × 1.88◦
1-LR
correlation between GCM and observation over Tropical South America
4. CESM2 National Center for Atmospheric 1.25◦ × 0.94◦ in the former study (Dias and Reboita, 2021).
Research, USA The 2nd group of performance indicators focuses on spatially aver­
5. CESM2-FV2 National Center for Atmospheric 2.50◦ × 1.88◦ aged time series, namely Temporal Correlation Coefficient (rt), Coeffi­
Research, USA
cient of variation (CV), Trend, and Mean Seasonal Cycle Amplitude
6. CMCC-CM2- Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo 1.25◦ × 0.94◦
HR4 sui Cambiamenti Climatici, Italy (SeasonAmp). For this group, there is computed mean precipitation for
7. CMCC-CM2- Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo 1.25◦ × 0.94◦ each year before computing statistics metrics (except SeasonAmp that
SR5 sui Cambiamenti Climatici, Italy computes mean monthly precipitation). The rt is calculated to judge the
8. CMCC-ESM2 Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo 1.25◦ × 0.94◦ temporal correlation between the GCM and GPCC; rt at or close to 1
sui Cambiamenti Climatici, Italy
9. E3SM-1-1- E3SM-Project 1.00◦ × 1.00◦
implies the best performance or perfect correlation. While the CV de­
ECA termines the relative variance of precipitation in term of average per­
10. E3SM-1-0 Lawrence Livermore National 1.00◦ × 1.00◦ centage per area, higher value indicating greater variance. The degree of
Laboratory, USA variability of rainfall can be classified into: CV < 20 = less variability,
11. EC-Earth3 EC-Earth-Consortium, Europe 0.70◦ × 0.70◦
20 < CV < 30 = moderate variability, CV > 30 = high variability
12. EC-Earth3- EC-Earth-Consortium, Europe 0.70◦ × 0.70◦
AerChem (Mohammed and Yimam, 2022). Trend is used as an indicator to
13. EC-Earth3-CC EC-Earth-Consortium, Europe 0.70◦ × 0.70◦ determine the movement direction (increase/decrease) of precipitation.
14. EC-Earth3- EC-Earth-Consortium, Europe 0.70◦ × 0.70◦ The positive direction of the calculated slope indicates increasing trend
Veg and vice versa (Azam et al., 2018). As the case of SeasonAmp, the first
15. EC-Earth3- EC-Earth-Consortium, Europe 1.13◦ × 1.13◦
step computes the mean annual cycle of monthly precipitation to find
Veg-LR
16. GFDL-ESM4 NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics 1.25◦ × 1.00◦ the wettest and driest month. After that, the spatial difference between
Laboratory, USA those months is computed as a percentage of mean annual precipitation
17. GISS-E2-1-G Goddard Institute for Space Studies, USA 2.50◦ × 2.00◦ before averaging for all pixels. The SeasonAmp value indicates the
18. GISS-E2-2-H Goddard Institute for Space Studies, USA 2.50◦ × 2.00◦
severity of changes in precipitation. Higher values indicate greater
19. IITM-ESM Centre for Climate Change Research, 1.88◦ × 1.91◦
Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, changes of precipitation seasonally.
India
20. IPSL-CM5A2- Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, France 3.75◦ × 1.88◦ 2.5. GCMs ranking
INCA
21. IPSL-CM6A- Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, France 2.50◦ × 1.26◦
27 GCMs from CMIP6 and 27-MODEL ENSEMBLE performances are
LR-INCA
22. KIOST-ESM Korea Institute of Ocean Science and 1.88◦ × 1.88◦ ranked on the precipitation simulation using ranking scores (RS)
Technology, Republic of Korea method, based on 8 indicators. RS is a widely used method in perfor­
23. MRI-ESM2-0 Meteorological Research Institute, Japan 1.13◦ × 1.13◦ mance ranking of GCMs (Rupp et al., 2013; Ruan et al., 2018; Jia et al.,
24. NorCPM1 NorESM Climate Modeling Consortium, 2.50◦ × 1.88◦
2019). RS uses a 3-step ranking process; firstly, absolute error of the
Norway
25. NorESM2-LM NorESM Climate Modeling Consortium, 2.50◦ × 1.88◦
statistical values between GCM and GPCC (ErrorGCM, M) is calculated
Norway using Eq. (2), where GPCCM and GCMM are the evaluation result of the
26. SAM0- Seoul National University, Republic of 1.25◦ × ~0.9◦ performance metric M of GPCC and GCM, respectively. However, in the
UNICON Korea case of r, GPCCM is set as 1. The lower the ErrorGCM, M value, the higher
27. TaiESM1 Research Center for Environmental 1.25◦ × 0.94◦
performance of GCM is indicated (Ruan et al., 2018). Second step is to
Changes, Taiwan, China
calculate relative error of GCMs in each performance metrics M (REGCM,
M) (Eq. (3)). The min and max are the lowest and highest values from all
model performance. GCM respectively. Finally, the total relative error (TREGCM) value is
derived from total sum of relative error by all performance metrics (Eq.
2.4. Performance metrics (3)) where N equals 8.
ErrorGCM,M = ∣ GPCCM − GCMM ∣ (2)
For model performance validation, precipitation outputs of GCM and
GPCC in SEA domain and country-specific domain over the period ( )
ErrorGCM,M − min ErrorGCM,M
1975–2014 are assessed using eight performance metrics, as listed in REGCM,M = ( ) ( ) (3)
max ErrorGCM,M − min ErrorGCM,M
Table 2. These indicators can be categorized into 2 main groups.
The 1st group of performance indicators focuses on evaluating
∑
M
spatial pattern of precipitation, namely Mean annual (MA), Mean bias TREGCM = REGCM,M (4)
errors (MBE), RMSE and Spatial Correlation Coefficient (rs). The MA is N=1

used to present the spatial pattern of the annual precipitation between

The performance ranking of each GCM is based on total relative error
GCMs against the GPCC (Abadi et al., 2018; Almazroui et al., 2020),
values. The lower total relative error of the GCM indicates a better
while the spatial bias direction between them is assessed by the MBE
performance in simulating precipitation closest to the data provided by
(Karim et al., 2020; Rivera and Arnould, 2020; Han et al., 2022; Yaz­
GPCC.
dandoost et al., 2021). A negative or positive direction of MBE indicates
where the precipitation value of GCM is underestimated or over­
estimated as compared to GPCC, respectively (Abbasian et al., 2019).
Whereas RMSE is used in this study to measure range of error between

4
S. Pimonsree et al. Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522

Table 2
Statistical equations of the performance metrics used in this study.
Group Metrics Equation Unit Range
∑N
I MA y=1 Py
mm ∞
N
MBE MAGCM − MAGPCC mm − ∞ to ∞
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
RMSE ∑n ( )2 mm 0 to ∞
p=1 MAGCMp − MAGPCCp
RMSE =
n
∑∑ ( )( )
rs i j MAGCMij − MAGCM MAGPCCij − MAGPCC
NA − 1 to 1
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
(∑ ∑ ( )2 )(∑ ∑ ( )2 )
i j MAGCMij − MAGCM i j MAGPCCij − MAGPCC
∑ ( )( )
II rt y MAGCMy − MAGCM MAGPCCy − MAGPCC
NA − 1 to 1
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
(∑ ( )2 )(∑ ( )2 )
t MAGCMy − MAGCM t MAGPCCy − MAGPCC
)
CV ( SD % ∞
x100
MA
Trend Y = a + bx mm -∞ to ∞
∑ ∑ ∑ ∑
MAy Ty 2 − Ty Ty MAy
when b = ∑ 2 ( ∑ )2
N* Ty − Ty
∑ ∑ ∑
N* Ty MAy − Ty MAy
a = ∑ ( ∑ )2
N* Ty 2 − Ty
SeasonAmp ((Monwettest − Mondriest)/MA) x 100 % − ∞ to ∞

Where Py is annual precipitation for year y and N is total number of the years; MAGCM is mean annual of GCM; MAGPCC is GPCC data; MAGCMp is the mean annual of the
GCM for a pixel p. MAGPCCp is the mean annual of the GPCC for a pixel p. n is total number of the pixels; MAGCMij is mean annual precipitation of GCM at row i and
column j; MAGPCCij is mean annual precipitation of GPCC at row i and column j. MAGCM is the average of mean annual precipitation of GCM. MAGPCC is the average of
mean annual precipitation of GPCC; MAGCMy is mean annual precipitation of GCM for year y; MAGPCCy is mean annual precipitation of GPCC for year y; MAGCM is the
average of mean annual precipitation of GCM; MAGPCC is the average of mean annual precipitation of GPCC; Monwettest is mean warmest month of model for 40-years
period; Mondriest is mean coldest month of model for 40-years period; SD is standard deviation; Y is forecast for period x, a is the intercept; b is slope; x is the time
period; Ty is the time series studied in year y. MAy is the annual mean for year y.

3. Results and discussion
3.1. Spatial pattern of precipitation simulations
The performances in simulating spatial pattern of precipitation of
GPCC, 27-MODEL ENSEMBLE, and each of the GCMs were evaluated
under the spatial distribution of mean annual precipitation during
1975–2014 as shown in Fig. 3. Model performance in SEA domain and
country domain are shown in Table A1-A10 in Supplementary Material.
GPCC data presented high changes in precipitation amount in SEA re­
gion with the values ranging between 654.75 and 7083.70 mm. The
average precipitation for 1975–2014 of GPCC in SEA domain is 2389.22
mm. where Brunei is the country with the highest amount of precipi­
tation in the region, with MA value at 3450.25 mm. Whereas Thailand
was found to have the lowest MA value in the region, at 1538.50 mm.
The area average of MA values in SEA of all GCMs and 27-MODEL
ENSEMBLE is in the range of 1335.74 - 3346.93 mm. The major fac­
tors contributing to the changes of precipitation in SEA include monsoon
influence, low air pressure/monsoon trough, and the storm path (Des­
met and Ngo-Duc, 2022). Compared from Figs. 2 and 3, it can be noticed
that coastal areas or mountain ranges are the areas with highest pre­
cipitation. For example, in western area of mainland Myanmar; pre­
cipitation is greatly influenced by the Southwest monsoon from the
Indian ocean. The eastern area of mainland precipitation is greatly
influenced by Northeastern monsoon from South China sea passing
through mountain ranges in Vietnam causing heavy precipitation in
Vietnam, Lao, and Cambodia. The southern region of Thailand and
Malaysia is influenced by Southwest and Northeast monsoons, and those
countries located in the maritime area precipitation are influenced by
passing of Australian summer monsoon and the typhoon path occurred
in the Pacific Ocean (Desmet and Ngo-Duc, 2022). Furthermore, the
changes in precipitation volume in SEA is also influenced by the
topography (Iqbal et al., 2021) since precipitation have been found low
in flat area (middle of mainland) and high in mountain ranges (i.e.,
northern area of Myanmar, Papua, and Borneo islands) which showed a
correlation with precipitation-elevation (Guo et al., 2021).
According to Fig. 3, typical GCMs simulate similarly spatial pattern
with high precipitation in maritime area and low precipitation in
mainland SEA but in the detailed analysis, each model has different
accuracy to simulate different spatial distribution and volume of pre­
cipitation. The variations of precipitation in the SEA region depend on
many factors, especially the occurrence of convective rain over the
equator which has highly complex change causing difficulty to set pa­
rameters of cumulus scheme in simulating climate in each simulation
(Ngo-Duc et al., 2017; Zhou and Han, 2018; Doutreloup et al., 2019).
However, there were several GCMs which showed spatial distribution in
SEA similar to GPCC such as; 27-MODEL ENSEMBLE, CESM2-FV2,
NorESM2-LM and families of EC-Earth3, with low relative error value
as seen in RMSE (Fig. 4). At the same time, some GCMs such as; AWI-
ESM-1-1-LR, and IPSL-CM6A-LR-INCA did not simulate well as notice­
able from the spatial distribution of the simulated precipitation that are
not similar to the pattern of GPCC and from the RMSE values which were
as high as 1519.42 mm and 2491.07 mm respectively. When taking into
consideration the value of MBE in Fig. 5, most simulation have over­
estimation for countries located in maritime as well as those in Thailand,
Cambodia and central Myanmar. Underestimation was seen in IITM-
ESM and KIOST-ESM in some simulations especially in Indonesia. Un­
derestimations are also found in Lao, the northern Vietnam and the
western area of Myanmar in several models which are related with low
performance for simulation of the precipitation influenced by southwest
monsoon. When considering the results of spatial precipitation simula­
tion in Fig. 3 with the topography map shown in Fig. 2, it was found that
several models showed low performance in the mountainous area. This
had also been reflected in previous studies where GCM over predicted
precipitation in mountainous areas, e.g. in the Tibetan Plateau, China
(Su et al., 2013), in the Andes, between Argentina and Chile (Rivera and
Arnould, 2020), in the southern Qinling Mountains, China (Wang et al.,
2021), and in the Tianshan Mountain, between Central Asia and the
northwestern part of China (Guo et al., 2021). This can be due to limited
simulation performance in mountainous areas which have complex
circulation, possibly generating precipitation from orographic lifting
(Adam et al., 2006). At the same time, the limited availability of

5
S. Pimonsree et al.
Fig. 3. Spatial distribution of mean annual precipitation (MA) of GPCC, 27-MODEL EENSEMBLE and 27 GCMs over the SEA land surface during 1975–2014.
measurement data in mountainous areas also posed inaccuracy in pre­
cipitation simulation since gridded data building of initial conditions
required sufficient data covering spatial variation and uniform distri­
bution of measurement (Su et al., 2013; Guo et al., 2021). Furthermore,
the simulation performance of precipitation in high mountainous areas
may be low because some GCMs with low spatial resolutions were not
able to simulate precipitation variations in the mountainous regions
(Yazdandoost et al., 2021). For example, GISS-E2–1-G and GISS-E2–2-H
exhibit high wet biases (>3000 mm) in high mountain area especially
north of Myanmar as shown in Fig. 5. The results of this study show that
even with the advancement of current CMIP6 GCMs, precipitation
simulation in mountainous regions still posed challenges. Additionally,
the findings also shown that some simulation models tended to under­
estimate annual precipitation such as in the case of IITM-ESM and
KIOST-ESM which revealed significant dry bias in almost all regions.
This results in both simulation models being ranked as the top 5 worst
with the highest RSME value in SEA-domain and all specific country
6
Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522
domain as shown in Fig. 4. Furthermore, it was also noticed that simu­
lation models from the same developers tend to exhibit similar results in
precipitation pattern and volume for example, EC-Earth models group
and GISS models group. It can be hypothesized that simulation models
made by the same developer apply similar basic configurations resulting
in similar simulation results (Döscher et al., 2022). Considering the
difference between the models and observation based on RMSE; 27-
MODEL ENSEMBLE, CESM2-FV2, and EC-Earth3-CC perform well in
the SEA domain, with values of 662.78 mm, 704.10 mm, and 715.82
mm, respectively. The best performance considering the RMSE in
Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines,
Thailand, and Vietnam are CMCC-CM2-SR5, EC-Earth3-CC, 27-GCM-
ENSEMBLE, EC-Earth3-Veg-LR, 27-GCM-ENSEM, ACCESS-CM2,
CESM2, EC-Earth3-Veg, and EC-Earth3-Veg-LR with RMSE values of
60.26 mm, 379.04 mm, 680.06 mm, 367.43 mm, 454.93 mm, 753.32
mm, 771.67 mm, 348.35 mm, and 399.64 mm, respectively.
In addition, the study also considers the consistency in spatial
S. Pimonsree et al.
Fig. 4. RMSE values of mean annual precipitation in 1975–2014 of 27-MODEL ENSEMBLE and models based on GPCC.
distribution between simulation models and GPCC data set using spatial
correlation coefficient (rs). The results shown in Table A.1. in the Sup­
plementary Material found the simulation models that best simulate
spatial variation of rainfall are 27- GCM-ENSEMBLE and ACCESS-CM2
with the rs values of 0.7, and most of simulation models in family of
EC-Earth3 has the rs values of 0.67. The best performance considering
the rs in Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines,
Thailand, and Vietnam are 3 GCMs in EC-Earth3 family (EC-Earth3-
AerChem/EC-Earth3-CC/EC-Earth3-Veg-LR), ACCESS-CM2, EC-Earth3-
AerChem, CMCC-ESM2, EC-Earth3-AerChem, CMCC-ESM2, EC-Earth3-
Veg, EC-Earth3 with rs of 0.84, 0.57, 0.64, 0.72, 0.76, 0.25, 0.75 and
7
Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522
0.63, respectively. From the values of rs, it can be noticed that lower
model performance to simulate spatial variation was found in the
maritime area compared to that in mainland SEA. In Brunei case, even
though all simulation models underwent spatial resolution downscaling
prior to the evaluation, the data is sparse since there are only 2 grid cells
data availability within the domain. The insufficient amount of datasets
available is not suitable for evaluating correlation coefficient (Aggarwal
and Ranganathan, 2016); therefore, rs of Brunei domain was not
evaluated.
S. Pimonsree et al.
Fig. 5. Spatial distribution of mean annual precipitation biases (MBE) of 27-MODEL EENSEMBLE and 27 GCMs over the SEA land surface during 1975–2014.
3.2. Temporal assessment of precipitation simulations
Since the volume and fluctuation of precipitation varies for each
country within the SEA region, the evaluation of the performance was
based on the ability to detect fluctuation of precipitation on temporal
basis. The analysis found that the best model performance in terms of
magnitudes of MA over SEA is for IPSL-CM5A2-INCA (MA = 2392.39
mm), with a difference from GPCC of only 3.17 mm. The models that
best perform for MA in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia,
Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam are EC-Earth3-Veg-LR,
E3SM-1-0, GISS-E2–1-G, AWI-ESM-1-1-LR, ACCESS-CM2, SAM0-
UNICON, NorCPM1, EC-Earth3-Veg-LR, and CESM2 with the mean
annual precipitation of 3441.08 mm, 1892.56 mm, 2903.30 mm,
1791.57 mm, 2930.50 mm, 2060.45 mm, 2443.23 mm, 1520.32 mm,
and 1939.29 mm, respectively. The differences from GPCC were 9.18
mm, 4.58 mm, 45.95 mm, 65.04 mm, 3.34 mm, 11.81 mm, 4.37 mm,
18.18 mm, and 26.37 mm, respectively. Fig. 6 shows the time series of
annual precipitation during 1975–2014 over SEA domain and 9 country
8
Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522
domains for all models and GPCC (1st and 3rd columns). The study on
the simulation performance of annual precipitation changes showed that
the values of the temporal correlation coefficient (rt) range from − 0.25
to 0.40 in the SEA, − 0.40 to 0.28 in the Brunei, − 0.20 to 0.38 in the
Cambodia, − 0.24 to 0.33 in the Indonesia, − 0.40 to 0.32 in the Lao,
− 0.23 to 0.40 in the Malaysia, − 0.38 to 0.54 in the Myanmar, − 0.26 to
0.26 in the Philippines, − 0.23 to 0.19 in the Thailand, and − 0.24 to
0.35 in the Vietnam (Fig. 7a). The inter-annual cycle of precipitation
from almost all the models has no significant correlation with the GPCC
for all domains (significance level < 0.05). The result showed that most
models in this study did not perform well in simulating the inter-annual
change of precipitation within SEA-domain and each specific country
domain.
The degree of inter-annual variability precipitation can be observed
the value of CV in Fig. 7b. The CV of GPCC in SEA domain is 7.16%,
while that in Philippines is highest (13.87%) and lowest in Cambodia
(8.26%). Major factors contributing to the high fluctuation of precipi­
tation in the SEA region for Philippines are monsoon variation, El Nino/
S. Pimonsree et al.
Fig. 6. Time series of mean annual of precipitation (1st and 3rd columns) and mean annual cycle of monthly precipitation (2nd and 4th columns) during the
period 1975–2014.
Southern Oscillation and cyclonic anomalies (Akasaka, 2010; World
Bank and GFDRR, 2011; Kubota et al., 2017; Olaguera et al., 2018;
Bagtasa, 2020). Furthermore, Philippines is geographically one of the
most typhoon-prone counties (Bohra-Mishra et al., 2017) resulting in
Philippines being affected by typhoon 6–9 times a year (Strobl, 2019).
The severity of typhoons also varied from year to year which is one of
the factors influencing high fluctuation of precipitation in the
9
Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522
Philippines. In all domains, comparisons of CV among GCMs reveal that
there are no noticeable differences between simulation models. CV
values of most simulation models are closer and consistent with GPCC;
for example, for the SEA domain, the CV value of GPCC is 7.16 whereas
the simulation models values ranged between 3.42 and 9.99 with the
exception of the 27 model ensemble, which has a value of 1.38. In the
case of performance evaluation for SEA domain simulation, it was found
S. Pimonsree et al. Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522

Fig. 7. Values of rt (a), CV (b), Trend (c), and SeasonAmp (d) for years 1975–2014.

10
S. Pimonsree et al.
that CMCC-ESM2 has the variance value similar to GPCC, at the rate
difference of only 0.02%. The best-performed models that can reproduce
the inter-annual variability of precipitation in Brunei, Cambodia,
Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam
are NorCPM1, CMCC-CM2-SR5, CMCC-CM2-SR5, CMCC-ESM2, CMCC-
ESM2, ACCESS-CM2, KIOST-ESM, EC-Earth3-CC, and IPSL-CM6A-LR-
INCA. CMCCs were able to remarkably simulate precipitation vari­
ability in the study wells at five out of ten study domains. In addition, it
is observed from Fig. 7b that 27- GCM ENSEMBLE has the furthest
agreement with the CV of GPCC in all domains. Considering the change
tendencies of annual precipitation from 1975 to 2014, GPCC shows an
increasing trend in precipitation in all domains (Fig. 7c). SEA domain
showed an increasing volume of precipitation at 5.82 mm/ year which is
consistent with frequency and severity of floods related to an increase in
the number of heavy rains and tropical storms in the past decades (Torti,
2012). The value of precipitation in each country domain in the region
illustrated increasing trend ranging from 1.64 mm/year to 11.74 mm/
year, being lowest in Myanmar and highest in Philippines. The SST
anomalies, severity of monsoon, and the fluctuation of low pressure/
monsoon trough are important factors in increasing precipitation within
the region (Dado and Takahashi, 2017; Trinh-Tuan et al., 2019; Taka­
hashi et al., 2020; Fakaruddin et al., 2022; Tomkratoke and Sirisup,
2022). In the study by Lasco et al. (2009), the increment of precipitation
in Philippines has a high relation to frequency and severity of tropical
cyclone occurrence in the Western Pacific, where approximately 532
tropical cyclones have occurred between 1975 and 2004. Of all the
models, only ACCESS-CM2 and AWI-ESM-1-1-LR can capture the posi­
tive trends like with GPCC in every study domain, while the other
models rather fail to catch the wetting trends, especially EC-Earth3-
AerChem. In terms of trend magnitude over SEA domain, AWI-ESM-1-
1-LR showed changing trend of precipitation between 1975 and 2014
closest to the observed trend. In the case of other domain, the results
(Fig. 7c) reveal that IPSL-CM6A-LR-INCA, SAM0-UNICON, IPSL-CM6A-
LR-INCA, KIOST-ESM, EC-Earth3, TaiESM1, AWI-ESM-1-1-LR, ACCESS-
CM2, and NorCPM1 had trend values nearest to GPCC in Brunei,
Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand,
and Vietnam, respectively. The simulation of precipitation trends is
therefore a challenging task in developing more accurate simulations for
the SEA region.
Previous research has shown that monthly precipitation climatology
varies by country/area (Rivera and Arnould, 2020; Guo et al., 2021; Li
et al., 2021; Yazdandoost et al., 2021; Desmet and Ngo-Duc, 2022). For
this reason, this research also verifies performance of all models in
simulating the monthly precipitation in all study domains. Fig. 6 (2nd
and 4th columns) show mean seasonal cycles of precipitation averaged
over the SEA domain and 9 country domains for the period 1975–2014.
GPCC shows that monthly precipitation over SEA ranges from 133.99
mm in February to 254.10 mm in August. It was discovered that volume
of precipitation increases slightly from March to August before
decreasing from September to December. Overall, it can be seen that all
models in SEA were able to create seasonal cycles consistent with GPCC
data where as many as 15 models including the 27-GCM-ENSEMBLE
were able to detect minimum and maximum precipitation month in
February and August, respectively. However, there were also several
models which have failed to generate the shape of the seasonal cycle
where their simulation results of monthly precipitation were too low
when compared to GPCC (e.g., IITM-ESM and KIOST-ESM) and notice­
ably too high (e.g., IPSL-CM6A-LR-INCA). The seasonal cycle of all areas
indicates significant relations between volume of precipitation in each
country with the monsoon occurrences (Moon and Ha, 2017). Data
analysis revealed that seasonal patterns of precipitation volumes in
mainland of Cambodia, Lao, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam were
similar, with heavy rainfall from May to September (Fig. 6), consistent
with the Southwest monsoon. It is not the same with the countries
located in maritime areas (with the exception of Philippines) showing
the simulation results related to the Australian summer monsoon during
11
Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522
October to January causing large volume of rainfall during the time (wet
season) and dry season during June to August. However, it was found
that precipitation in Philippines was quite different from other coun­
tries, with the Southwest monsoon causing significant spike in May and
continuing to influence the rainfall onwards until November before
decreasing in December. Furthermore, due to Philippines’s location in
the typhoon belt, the occurrences of typhoon causing a high rainfall
level are generally in July to October (de Viana, 2014). It is noted that
only a few models that can catch the increase of rainfall level in October
for Philippines’s case. The results of the average precipitation cycle are
used to calculate SeasonAmp to measure precipitation differences in
each area between highest rainfall and lowest rainfall month (Fig. 7d).
Over SEA, all simulations perfomed quite well with SeasonAmp values
ranged between 5.53% (AWI-ESM-1-1-LR) to 9.69% (KIOST-ESM).
SeasonAmp in Fig. 7d indicates noticeable difference between countries
lated in mainland and maritime. Precipitation change in Cambodia, Lao,
Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam were noticeably more for SeasonAmp
as compared to those in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines.
The figure also showed that all models were able to simulate the Sea­
sonAmp of precipitation changes in consistent with GPCC. GISS-E21-G
performed best in SEA, with SeasonAmp value of 6.53%. The best per­
formance in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia, Myanmar,
Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam are with SAM0-UNICON, GISS-
E2–2-H, GISS-E2–2-H, CMCC-ESM2, EC-Earth3-CC, CMCC-CM2-SR5,
SAM0-UNICON, TaiESM1, and CMCC-CM2-HR4, with an SeasonAmp
value of 5.24%, 17.53%, 5.11%, 19.60%, 5.80%, 18.39%, 6.90%,
16.84%, and 14.21%, respectively.
3.3. Model ranking
Based on the results from Sections 3.1 and 3.2, it can be seen that
each simulation performed differently on the different metrics. No single
model can perform best on all metrics. For example, in the SEA domain,
ACCESS-CM2 is the best model for rs; however, it is ranked third for
Trend and eleventh for MA. Therefore, multiple performance metrics are
usually applied in simulation assessment (Jia et al., 2019; Iqbal et al.,
2021; Desmet and Ngo-Duc, 2022; Wang et al., 2021). The different
results from each metric must be summed up to provide the overall
performance of each simulation using the RS method. Fig. 8 shows the
relative error values of each metric of each model in the SEA-domain
and each specific country domain. The relative error value of the
metric presents the gap value between GCM and GPCC, which ranged
between 0 and 1. Therefore, the GCMs which have the relative error
value closest to 0 can indicate higher performance in that metric; on the
other hand, GCMs with lower performance have relative error value
closer to 1. Finally, GCMs performance can be ranked by summarizing
all relative error values derived from all indicators, the lower value
indicating better simulation performance with the model values closer
to GPCC.
The results of performance ranking are shown in Fig. 8 from best to
worst performing (least to most total relative error) as seen from top to
bottom. For the SEA domain, the lowest total relative error score shows
that TaiESM1 (1.25) is clearly top-ranked and is followed by EC-Earth3
(1.40), and ACCESS-CM2 (1.55), respectively. The result of this study is
consistent with previous CMIP6 study by Iqbal et al. (2021) and Desmet
and Ngo-Duc (2022) which had reported that EC-Earth3 and ACCESS-
CM2 were among top ranking model in precipitation simulation
assessment in SEA. Since TaiESM1 (ranked 1 in this study) is a newly
published simulation model, its performance has not been evaluated in
SEA in Iqbal et al. (2021) and Desmet and Ngo-Duc (2022). Therefore,
this study helps update the top ranking precipitation simulation model
in SEA where TaiESM1 is ranked first. The models from the institute of
EC-Earth-Consortium (EC-Earth3 and EC-Earth3-Veg-LR) were shown as
best performers for the domains of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao,
Malaysia and Vietnam with the total relative error value <1.24. While
the models with relatively highest performance to simulate precipitation
S. Pimonsree et al.
Fig. 8. Rank of 27 CMIP6 models and 27-MODEL ENSEMBLE based on relative error calculated by the summation of 8 performance metrics for (a) SEA, (b) Brunei,
(c) Cambodia, (d) Indonesia, (e) Lao, (f) Malaysia, (g) Myanmar, (h) Philippines, (i) Thailand, and (j) Vietnam. Number inside each metric is the ranking number. [In
Brunei’s case, rs is not evaluated; therefore, there is no result value for rs for the Brunei domain. It is defined as NaN.]
in Myanmar, Philippines, and Thailand are CESM2-FV2, CESM2-FV2,
and TaiESM1, respectively. Even though TaiESM1 is the best model for
SEA domain, EC-Earth3 and EC-Earth3-Veg-LR also performed better in
different country domains. Model ranking also indicated that KIOST-
ESM and AWI-ESM-1-1-LR showed limited performance for precipita­
tion simulation in the regional level, with total relative error higher than
other models in almost all study domain cases. The simple mean
ensemble based on 27 models has mediocre performance in SEA and the
countries in SEA. This is probably because the 27-MODEL ENSEMBLE is
an average result of good and bad performing models. Therefore, many
studies have chosen the 3–10 best performing models for computing
ensembles (Ahmadalipour et al., 2017; Hussain et al., 2018; Khan et al.,
2018; Xuan et al., 2017; Guo et al., 2021).
Arranged by climate zones, most of the study areas are in the equa­
torial and subequatorial climatic zones. Fig. 3 revealed that the perfor­
mance of CMIP6 differs notably in different climatic zones. The mean
annual precipitation for most areas in Cambodia, Lao, Myanmar, the
Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, which are in the subequatorial
climate zone, is between 1000 and 2000 mm, which is markedly
different from Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia, which are in the equa­
torial climate zone and have a mean annual precipitation of 2000 to
6000 mm. The model ranking by all metrics in Fig. 8 shows that coun­
tries in the same climate zone or with similar climate factors show re­
sults in the same direction. The model ranking results clearly show that
the model group of EC-Earth-Consortium is among the most effective
models for simulating rainfall in subequatorial climates, especially EC-
Earth3-Veg-LR, which is ranked first in Cambodia, Lao, Thailand, and
Vietnam and third in Myanmar. It was also found that three models,
namely EC-Earth3, EC-Earth3-Veg and EC-Earth3-CC, performed
12
Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522
outstandingly and comparably, as these models are often found in the
high-performance category even in subequatorial climates. Only EC-
Earth3-AerChem performed worse compared to the models developed
by the same organization, ranked 15th, 22nd, 15th, 18th, 21st, and 15th
in Cambodia, Lao, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam,
respectively. All the EC-Earth models in this study have basic configu­
rations derived from EC-Earth3 and higher grid resolution than the other
datasets, and thus generally performed better than the other models.
However, what set EC-Earth3-Veg-LR apart from the developing group is
that it has an additional component for simulating interactive vegetation
at low resolution, as well as additional new physical parameterizations
and improved tuning parameters (Döscher et al., 2022). These could be
the reasons why EC-Earth3-Veg-LR performs better than EC-Earth3, EC-
Earth3-Veg, EC-Earth3-CC and EC-Earth3-AerChem including other
models in simulating precipitation in Cambodia, Lao, Thailand, and
Vietnam. At the same time, it was found that the best models for
simulating precipitation in Myanmar and the Philippines differ from
those of other countries in the same climate zone. The best model for
simulating precipitation for both Myanmar and the Philippines is
CESM2-FV2. Looking at the location of Myanmar and the Philippines, it
is found that both countries are more affected by stronger monsoons
than other countries in the same climate zone and they are located in the
passage area of oceanic storms (Desmet and Ngo-Duc, 2022). As a result,
rainfall in both countries is quantitatively consistent and can be as high
as 4500 mm in some areas (Fig. 3). Moreover, the evaluation results of
model performance in this study clearly show that the best performing
models (top 5) in Myanmar and the Philippines are quite different from
those in the same climate zone. So, alghough EC-Earth3-Veg-LR is able
to simulate precipitation well in most of the countries in the
S. Pimonsree et al. Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522

subequatorial climates, CESM2-FV2 is able to detect monsoon-

influenced precipitation better than other models in Myanmar and the
Philippines. When considering model performance in equatorial cli­
mates, EC-Earth3 proved to be highly effective in simulating precipita­
tion with results ranked 1st in Brunei and Malaysia and 2nd in
Indonesia. The mountainous terrain and abundant agricultural land in
Indonesia might be the reason that EC-Earth3-Veg-LR, with further de­
velopments and particular improvements in interactive vegetation at
low resolution, is the most efficient. Overall, many countries within the
same climate zone show a well- consistent model group. However, this
research also indicates that there are other factors affecting performance
evaluations in different countries, leading to different results even in the
same climate zones.

3.4. Multi-model ensemble mean of top 5 models

Multi-model ensemble of the top 5 in the SEA domain is calculated

for the test of its accuracy compared to other single models in the SEA
region. Table 3 and Fig. 9 show that the ensemble mean of the top 5 can
further reduce the simulation errors of the model’s precipitation in
terms of mean, bias direction, error, and correlation compared to the
best model in SEA (TaiESM1). Although the multi-model ensemble
method can improve this simulation performance in many aspects, it
also has limitations. Table 3 illustrates the effects of averaging methods
for multiple model, especially in terms of variance. It is evident that the
5-GCM-ENSEMBLE’s CV is significantly reduced, which differs greatly
from GPCC compared to TaiESM1 and 27-GCM-ENSEMBLE.
Eyring et al. (2019) reports that CMIP6 GCMs improves the process
of physical parameterization and higher spatial resolution; there are also
more components of Earth system processes than in CMIP5. However,
performance comparisons with previous GCMs can help validate capa­ Fig. 9. Rank of 27 CMIP6 models, 5-MODEL ENSEMBLE, and 27-MODEL
ENSEMBLE based on relative error calculated by the summation of 8 perfor­
bilities and increase confidence in the selection of the CMIP6 model,
mance metrics for SEA.
which has been evaluated as suitable for SEA precipitation simulations
(ACCESS-CM2, CMCC-CM2-SR5, EC-Earth3, EC-Earth3-Veg-LR, and
TaiESM1). Kamworapan and Surussavadee (2019) evaluated the effi­ covering both spatial and temporal variation. The results of all perfor­
ciency of 40 CMIP5 GCMs to find suitable models for simulating climate mance metrics were tabulated to rank the overall performance of each
in the SEA region, and found that CESM1-BGC, CCSM4, CNRM-CM5–2, GCM using RS method.
CESM1-FASTCHEM, and CESM-CAM5 are a family of high-performance The results of this study can be summarized as follows: First, some
models for precipitation simulation. Therefore, these five best models models performed well in simulating spatial distribution of precipitation
from Kamworapan and Surussavadee (2019) are selected in this study to in SEA region and country domains, with more precipitation level in
determine the effectiveness of precipitation simulation. The spatial maritime and less in mainland. However, most models tended to have
distribution of mean annual precipitation bias (MBE) of the multi-model wet biases in countries located in maritime countries, Thailand, central
ensemble of selected CMIP5 and CMIP6 GCMs during the period Myanmar and Cambodia, while they tend to have dry biases in
1960–1999 is shown in Fig. 10. It can be observed that the spatial bias Indonesia, Lao, northern Vietnam and the western area of Myanmar. In
patterns of the two phases are similar and in the same direction. How­ addition, there were limitations in precipitation simulation in moun­
ever, CMIP5 showed a large dry bias in Indonesia, especially in Sumatra tainous areas in several models of CMIP6 with similar results to previous
and Borneo. In contrast, the wet bias in the eastern Borneo Islands region phases. Moreover, there are many GCM datasets with different grid
in CMIP6 was slightly higher than in CMIP5. Overall, it appears that the resolutions. The uncertainty might exist due to re-gridding GCMs to be
improvement in the CMIP6 model contributes to CMIP6 capturing the the same grid resolution as the observation dataset. These results,
precipitation patterns in the SEA area better than CMIP5 with lower indicate that rainfall simulation in high mountain range is still a key
MBE and RMSE and higher rs (Table 4). challenge for model developers. In the SEA domain, 15 out of the 27
CMIP6 GCMs and the 27-MODEL ENSEMBLE showed a moderate degree
of spatial correlation between simulation models and GPCC (rs > 0.6).
4. Conclusions
This also shows that at least one of the models in Cambodia, Malaysia,
Myanmar, and Thailand has a high spatial correlation (rs > 0.7), while
This research evaluated the performances of 27 CMIP6 GCMs in
none of the models shows rs >0.6 for Indonesia and Philippines. Second,
simulating the precipitation of the SEA region and nine countries therein
most CMIP6 models perform well in terms of inter-annual variability of
by comparing with the GPCC gridded datasets for the period of 1975 to
precipitation during 1975–2014 in all domains, with CV very close to
2014. GCMs’ performance was evaluated by using performance metrics

Table 3
MA, MBE, RMSE, rs, rt, CV, Trend, and SeasonAmp values for years 1975–2014 in SEA.
Models MA (mm) MBE (mm) RMSE (mm) rs rt CV (%) Trend (mm) SeasonAmp (%)

GPCC 2389.22 0 0 1 1 7.16 5.82 6.53

TaiESM1 2313.59 − 75.62 784.67 0.59 0.21 7.39 1.30 7.14
5- GCM-ENSEMBLE 2384.23 − 4.99 649.69 0.72 0.44 3.14 1.20 7.57

13
S. Pimonsree et al.
Fig. 10. Spatial distribution of mean annual precipitation biases (MBE) of selected (a) CMIP5 and (b) CMIP6 over the SEA land surface during 1960–1999.
Table 4
Values of MBE, RMSE and rs of selected CMIP5 and CMIP6 GCMs.
MBE (mm) RMSE (mm) rs
CMIP5 − 68.54 742.55 0.59
CMIP6 49.08 668.35 0.68
GPCC. Only 27-MODEL-ENSEMBLE was not able to simulate variation in
precipitation during the study as there was the furthest agreement with
the CV of GPCC. The analysis of observations found that the precipita­
tion in the SEA region and 9 countries produces an increasing trend.
Only 2 out of 27 models can capture the positive trends like with GPCC
in every study domain, while the other models rather fail to catch the
wetting trends. For all study domains, most models can simulate the
seasonal cycle of precipitation corresponding to GPCC. The magnitude
of seasonal variation of precipitation for countries located in mainland
and maritime were largely different, with fairly high SeasonAmp values
in Cambodia, Lao, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam and fairly low
SeasonAmp values in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines.
Lastly, this research also pointed out that the best GCM in precipitation
simulation of each study-domain have varied results. The result showed
that TaiESM1 is the top performer in simulating precipitation in SEA-
domain followed by EC-Earth3 and ACCESS-CM2, respectively. Even
though TaiESM1 was ranked as a top performer for SEA domain, it is not
the best performing model for each country’s domains of the SEA region
(except Thailand). EC-Earth3 and EC-Earth3-Veg-LR from the institute
of EC-Earth-Consortium perform best in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia,
Lao, Malaysia and Vietnam, while CESM2-FV2 is the highest perfor­
mance to simulate precipitation in Myanmar and Philippines. Addi­
tionally, it was found that 27- MODEL ENSEMBLE based on all models in
this study has ordinary performance in both SEA and the country in SEA.
Accurate data of climate change from GCMs are a crucial input in
assessing the impact of climate change. This study provides useful in­
formation in the selection of GCMs for climate change applications in
SEA region and each country domains in SEA. The simulation of pre­
cipitation in tropical area is quite difficult due to complexities of tem­
poral and spatial characteristics. Hence, the simulation of precipitation
in SEA still poses challenges for model developers. The uncertainty in
this work also provide feedback information for improvement of climate
change model for SEA in the future. For further studies, the best model in
this study is crucial in using it to be a reference for future precipitation
research to investigate precipitation variation and trends in the SEA in
the 21st century for developing and creating adaptation and mitigation
strategies for disaster risk management and sustainable water resource
management.
14
Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Sittichai Pimonsree: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation,
Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Supervision. Suchada Kam­
worapan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation,
Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Visualization. Shabbir H.
Gheewala: Writing – review & editing, Supervision. Amornpong
Thongbhakdi: Writing – review & editing. Kritana Prueksakorn:
Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Resources, Writing – re­
view & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding
acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
We have shared the link to the data used in this study in the reference
list.
Acknowledgement
This research project is supported by Faculty of Environment and
Resource Studies, Mahidol University. The authors also acknowledge the
climate modelling groups for making their model output and the World
Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling
that established the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, which is a
project to collect all GCMs. We are grateful to the Earth System Grid
Federation (ESGF) for archiving and sharing the dataset CMIP6 GCMs.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2022.106522.
References
Abadi, A.M., Oglesby, R., Rowe, C., Mawalagedara, R., 2018. Evaluation of GCMs
historical simulations of monthly and seasonal climatology over Bolivia. Clim. Dyn.
51, 733–754. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3952-y.
Abbasian, M., Moghim, S., Abrishamchi, A., 2019. Performance of the general circulation
models in simulating temperature and precipitation over Iran. Theor. Appl. Climatol.
135, 1465–1483. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-018-2456-y.
Adam, J.C., Clark, E.A., Lettenmaier, D.P., Wood, E.F., 2006. Correction of global
precipitation products for orographic effects. J. Clim. 19, 15–38. https://doi.org/
10.1175/jcli3604.1.
S. Pimonsree et al.
Aggarwal, R., Ranganathan, P., 2016. Common pitfalls in statistical analysis: the use of
correlation techniques. Perspect Clin. Res. 7, 187. https://doi.org/10.4103/2229-
3485.192046.
Ahmadalipour, A., Rana, A., Moradkhani, H., Sharma, A., 2017. Multi-criteria evaluation
of CMIP5 GCMs for climate change impact analysis. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 128,
71–87. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1695-4.
Akasaka, I., 2010. Interannual variations in seasonal march of rainfall in the Philippines.
Int. J. Climatol. 30, 1301–1314. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.1975.
Alam, M., Lee, J., Sawhney, P., 2018. Status of Climate Change Adaptation in Asia and
the Pacific. Springer, New York, NY, USA, pp. 27–40.
Almazroui, M., Saeed, S., Saeed, F., Islam, M.N., Ismail, M., 2020. Projections of
precipitation and temperature over the South Asian countries in CMIP6. Earth Syst.
Environ. 4, 297–320. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41748-020-00157-7.
Ayugi, B., Zhihong, J., Zhu, H., Ngoma, H., Babaousmail, H., Rizwan, K., Dike, V., 2021.
Comparison of CMIP6 and CMIP5 models in simulating mean and extreme
precipitation over East Africa. Int. J. Climatol. 41, 6474–6496. https://doi.org/
10.1002/joc.7207.
Azam, M., Maeng, S.J., Kim, H.S., Lee, S.W., Lee, J.E., 2018. Spatial and temporal trend
analysis of precipitation and drought in South Korea. Water. 10, 765. https://doi.
org/10.3390/w10060765.
Babaousmail, H., Hou, R., Ayugi, B., Ojara, M., Ngoma, H., Karim, R., Rajasekar, A.,
Ongoma, V., 2021. Evaluation of the performance of CMIP6 models in reproducing
rainfall patterns over North Africa. Atmosphere. 12, 475. https://doi.org/10.3390/
atmos12040475.
Baede, A.P.M., Ahlonsou, E., Ding, Y., Schimel, D., Bolin, B., Pollonais, S., 2001. Climate
change 2001: the scientific basis, contribution from Working Group I to the Third
Assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. In:
Houghton, J.T., Ding, Y., Griggs, D.J., Noguer, M., van der Linden, P.J., Dai, K.,
Maskell, K., Johnson, C.A. (Eds.), The Climate System: An Overview. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Bagtasa, G., 2020. Influence of Madden–Julian oscillation on the intraseasonal variability
of summer and winter monsoon rainfall in the Philippines. J. Clim. 33, 9581–9594.
https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0305.1.
Bohra-Mishra, P., Oppenheimer, M., Cai, R., Feng, S., Licker, R., 2017. Climate variability
and migration in the Philippines. Popul. Environ. 38, 286–308. https://doi.org/
10.1007/s11111-016-0263-x.
Chen, Z., Zhou, T., Zhang, L., Chen, X., Zhang, W., Jiang, J., 2020. Global land monsoon
precipitation changes in CMIP6 projections. Geophys. Res. Lett. 47, e2019GL086902
https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL086902.
Cui, T., Li, C., Tian, F., 2021. Evaluation of temperature and precipitation simulations in
CMIP6 models over the Tibetan Plateau. Earth Space Sci. 8, e2020EA001620 https://
doi.org/10.1029/2020EA001620.
Dado, J.M.B., Takahashi, H.G., 2017. Potential impact of sea surface temperature on
rainfall over the western Philippines. Prog. Earth Planet. Sci. 4, 1–12. https://doi.
org/10.1186/s40645-017-0137-6.
de Viana, A.V., 2014. The Philippines’ typhoon alley: the historic bagyos of the
Philippines and their impact. Jurnal Kajian Wilayah. 5, 184–216. http://jkw.psdr.lip
i.go.id/index.php/jkw/article/view/262/136.
Desmet, Q., Ngo-Duc, T., 2022. A novel method for ranking CMIP6 global climate models
over the southeast Asian region. Int. J. Climatol. 42, 97–117. https://doi.org/
10.1002/joc.7234.
Dias, C.G., Reboita, M.S., 2021. Assessment of CMIP6 Simulations over Tropical South
America. Braz. J.Phys. Geogr. 14, 1282–1295. https://doi.org/10.26848/rbgf.v14.3.
Döscher, R., Acosta, M., Alessandri, A., Anthoni, P., Arneth, A., Arsouze, T.,
Bergmann, T., Bernadello, R., Bousetta, S., Caron, L.-P., Carver, G., Castrillo, M.,
Catalano, F., Cvijanovic, I., Davini, P., Dekker, E., Doblas-Reyes, F.J., Docquier, D.,
Echevarria, P., Fladrich, U., Fuentes-Franco, R., Gröger, M.V., Hardenberg, J.,
Hieronymus, J., Karami, M.P., Keskinen, J.P., Koenigk, T., Makkonen, R.,
Massonnet, F., Ménégoz, M., Miller, P.A., Moreno-Chamarro, E., Nieradzik, L., van
Noije, T., Nolan, P., O’Donnell, D., Ollinaho, P., van den Oord, G., Ortega, P.,
Prims, O.T., Ramos, A., Reerink, T., Rousset, C., Ruprich-Robert, Y., Le Sager, P.,
Schmith, T., Schrödner, R., Serva, F., Sicardi, V., Sloth Madsen, M., Smith, B.,
Tian, T., Tourigny, E., Uotila, P., Vancoppenolle, M., Wang, S., Wårlind, D.,
Willén, U., Wyser, K., Yang, S., Yepes-Arbós, X., Zhang, Q., 2022. The EC-Earth3
Earth system model for the coupled model intercomparison project 6. Geosci. Model
Dev. 15, 2973–3020. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2973-2022.
Doutreloup, S., Wyard, C., Amory, C., Kittel, C., Erpicum, M., Fettweis, X., 2019.
Sensitivity to convective schemes on precipitation simulated by the regional climate
model MAR over Belgium (1987–2017). Atmosphere. 10, 34. https://doi.org/
10.3390/atmos10010034.
ESGF the Earth System Grid Federation, 2021. https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip6/
(accessed 15 December 2021).
Eyring, V., Bony, S., Meehl, G.A., Senior, C., Stevens, B., Stouffer, R.J., Taylor, K.E., 2016.
Overview of the coupled model intercomparison project phase 6 (CMIP6)
experimental design and organisation. Geosci. Model Dev. 9, 1937–1958. https://
doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-1937-2016.
Eyring, V., Cox, P.M., Flato, G.M., Gleckler, P.J., Abramowitz, G., Caldwell, P.,
Collins, W.D., Gier, B.K., Hall, A.D., Hoffman, F.M., Hurtt, G.C., 2019. Taking
climate model evaluation to the next level. Nat. Clim. Chang. 9, 102–110. https://
doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0355-y.
Faikrua, A., Pimonsree, S., Wang, L., Limsakul, A., Singhruck, P., Dong, Z., 2020. Decadal
increase of the summer precipitation in Thailand after the mid-1990s. Clim. Dyn. 55,
3253–3267. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05443-8.
Fakaruddin, F.J., Nawai, N.A., Abllah, M., Tangang, F., Juneng, L., 2022. Climatological
Features of Squall Line at the Borneo Coastline during Southwest Monsoon.
Atmosphere 13, 116. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13010116.
15
Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522
Goosse, H., Barriat, P.Y., Loutre, M.F., Zunz, V., 2010. Introduction to Climate Dynamics
and Climate Modeling. Centre de recherche sur la Terre et le climat Georges
Lemaître-UCLouvain. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Guo, H., Bao, A., Chen, T., Zheng, G., Wang, Y., Jiang, L., De Maeyer, P., 2021.
Assessment of CMIP6 in simulating precipitation over Arid Central Asia. Atmos. Res.
252 (105451), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2021.105451.
Gupta, S., 2010. Synthesis report on ten ASEAN countries disaster risks assessment. In:
ASEAN Disaster Risk Management Initiative. United Nations International Strategy
for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR)/Washington, DC, USA: World Bank, Geneva,
Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.32014.36160.
Gusain, A., Ghosh, S., Karmakar, S., 2020. Added value of CMIP6 over CMIP5 models in
simulating Indian summer monsoon rainfall. Atmos. Res. 232, 104680 https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2019.104680.
Hajima, T., Watanabe, M., Yamamoto, A., Tatebe, H., Noguchi, M.A., Abe, M.,
Ohgaito, R., Ito, A., Yamazaki, D., Okajima, H., Ito, A., Takata, K., Ogochi, K.,
Watanabe, S., Kawamiya, M., 2020. Development of the MIROC-ES2L earth system
model and the evaluation of biogeochemical processes and feedbacks. Geosci. Model
Dev. 13, 2197–2244. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-2197-2020.
Han, Y., Zhang, M.Z., Xu, Z., Guo, W., 2022. Assessing the performance of 33 CMIP6
models in simulating the large-scale environmental fields of tropical cyclones. Clim.
Dyn. 1-16 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05986-4.
Hinkle, D.E., Wiersma, W., Jurs, S.G., 2003. Applied Statistics for the Behavioral
Sciences, 5th ed. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, p. 756.
Hussain, M., Yusof, K.W., Mustafa, M.R.U., Mahmood, R., Jia, S., 2018. Evaluation of
CMIP5 models for projection of future precipitation change in Bornean tropical
rainforests. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 134, 423–440. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-
017-2284-5.
IPCC, 2021. Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. In: Masson-Delmotte, V.,
Zhai, P., Pirani, A., Connors, S.L., Péan, C., Berger, S., Caud, N., Chen, Y.,
Goldfarb, L., Gomis, M.I., Huang, M., Leitzell, K., Lonnoy, E., Matthews, J.B.R.,
Maycock, T.K., Waterfield, T., Yelekçi, O., Yu, R., Zhou, B. (Eds.), Contribution of
Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New
York, NY, USA, p. 2391. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896.
Iqbal, Z., Shahid, S., Ahmed, K., Ismail, T., Ziarh, G.F., Chung, E.S., Wang, X., 2021.
Evaluation of CMIP6 GCM rainfall in mainland Southeast Asia. Atmos. Res. 254,
105525 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2021.105525.
Jia, K., Ruan, Y., Yang, Y., Zhang, C., 2019. Assessing the performance of CMIP5 global
climate models for simulating future precipitation change in the Tibetan Plateau.
Water. 11, 1771. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11091771.
Jiang, D., Hu, D., Tian, Z., Lang, X., 2020. Differences between CMIP6 and CMIP5 models
in simulating climate over China and the East Asian monsoon. Adv. Atmos. Sci. 37,
1102–1118. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-020-2034-y.
Kamruzzaman, M., Shahid, S., Islam, A.R.M., Hwang, S., Cho, J., Zaman, M.A.U.,
Ahmed, M., Rahman, Md.M., Hossain, M.B., 2021. Comparison of CMIP6 and CMIP5
model performance in simulating historical precipitation and temperature in
Bangladesh: a preliminary study. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 145, 1385–1406. https://
doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03691-0.
Kamworapan, S., Surussavadee, C., 2019. Evaluation of CMIP5 global climate models for
simulating climatological temperature and precipitation for Southeast Asia. Adv.
Meteorol. 2019, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/1067365.
Karim, R., Tan, G., Ayugi, B., Babaousmail, H., Liu, F., 2020. Evaluation of historical
CMIP6 model simulations of seasonal mean temperature over Pakistan during 1970-
2014. Atmosphere. 11, 1005. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11091005.
Khan, N., Shahid, S., Ahmed, K., Ismail, T., Nawaz, N., Son, M., 2018. Performance
Assessment of General Circulation Model in Simulating Daily Precipitation and
Temperature using Multiple Gridded Datasets. Water. 10, 1793. https://doi.org/
10.3390/w10121793.
Kubota, H., Shirooka, R., Matsumoto, J., Cayanan, E.O., Hilario, F.D., 2017. Tropical
cyclone influence on the long-term variability of Philippine summer monsoon onset.
Prog. Earth Planet. Sci. 4, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40645-017-0138-5.
Lasco, R.D., Pulhin, F.B., Jaranilla-Sanchez, P.A., Delfino, R.J.P., Gerpacio, R., Garcia, K.,
2009. Mainstreaming adaptation in developing countries: the case of the Philippines.
Clim. Dev. 1, 130–146. https://doi.org/10.3763/cdev.2009.0009.
Li, Y., Yan, D., Peng, H., Xiao, S., 2021. Evaluation of precipitation in CMIP6 over the
Yangtze River Basin. Atmos. Res. 253, 105406 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
atmosres.2020.105406.
Mauritsen, T., Bader, J., Becker, T., Behrens, J., Bittner, M., Brokopf, R., Brovkin, V.,
Claussen, M., Crueger, T., Esch, M., Fast, I., Fiedler, S., Flaschner, D., Gayler, V.,
Giorgetta, M., Goll, D., Haak, H., Hagemann, S., Hedernann, C., Hohenegger, C.,
Ilyina, T., Jahns, T., Jimenez de la Cuesta, D., Jungclaus, J., Kleinen, T., Kloster, S.,
Kracher, D., Stefan, K., Kleberg, D., Lasslop, G., Kornblueh, L., Marotzke, J.,
Matei, D., Meraner, K., Mikolajewicz, U., Modali, K., Mobis, B., Muller, W., Nabel, J.,
Nam, C., Notz, D., Nyawira, S., Paulsen, H., Peters, K., Pincus, R., Pohlmann, H.,
Pongratz, J., Popp, M., Raddatz, T., Rast, S., Redler, R., Reick, C., Rohrscheneider, T.,
Schemann, V., Schimidt, H., Schnur, R., Schulzweida, U., Six, K., Stein, L.,
Stemmler, I., Stevens, B., von Storch, J., Tian, F., Voigt, A., Vrese, P., Wieners, K.,
Wilkenskjeld, S., Winkler, A., Roeckner, E., 2019. Developments in the MPI-M earth
system model version 1.2 (MPI-ESM1. 2) and its response to increasing CO2. J. Adv.
Model. Earth Syst. 11, 998–1038. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018MS001400.
Meehl, G.A., Covey, C., McAvaney, B., Latif, M., Stouffer, R.J., 2005. Overview of the
coupled model intercomparison project. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 86, 89–96. https://
doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-86-1-89.
Mohammed, J.A., Yimam, Z.A., 2022. Spatiotemporal variability and trend analysis of
rainfall in Beshilo sub-basin, Upper Blue Nile (Abbay) Basin of Ethiopia. Arab. J.
Geosci. 15, 1387. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-022-10666-6.
S. Pimonsree et al.
Moon, S., Ha, K.J., 2017. Temperature and precipitation in the context of the annual
cycle over Asia: model evaluation and future change. Asia-Pacific J. Atmos. Sci. 53,
229–242. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13143-017-0024-5.
Ngo-Duc, T., Tangang, F.T., Santisirisomboon, J., Cruz, F., Trinh-Tuan, L., Nguyen-
Xuan, T., Phan-Van, T., Juneng, L., Narisma, G., Singhruck, P., Gunawan, D.,
Aldrian, E., 2017. Performance evaluation of RegCM4 in simulating extreme rainfall
and temperature indices over the CORDEX-Southeast Asia region. Int. J. Climatol.
37, 1634–1647. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.4803.
Olaguera, L.M., Matsumoto, J., Kubota, H., Inoue, T., Cayanan, E.O., Hilario, F.D., 2018.
Abrupt climate shift in the mature rainy season of the Philippines in the mid-1990s.
Atmosphere. 9, 350. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos9090350.
Phuong, D.N.D., Linh, V.T., Nhat, T.T., Dung, H.M., Loi, N.K., 2019. Spatiotemporal
variability of annual and seasonal rainfall time series in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam.
J. Water Clim. Change. 10, 658–670. https://doi.org/10.2166/wcc.2018.115.
Piman, T., Pawattana, C., Vansarochana, A., Aekakkararungroj, A., Hormwichian, R.,
2016. Analysis of historical changes in rainfall in Huai Luang watershed, Thailand.
Int. J. Technol. 7, 1155–1162. https://doi.org/10.14716/ijtech.v7i7.4709.
Randall, D.A., Wood, R.A., Bony, S., Colman, R., Fichefet, T., Fyfe, J., Kattsov, V.,
Pitman, A., Shukla, J., Srinivasan, J., Stouffer, R.J., Sumi, A., Taylor, K.E., 2007.
Cilmate models and their evaluation. In: Solomon, S., Qin, D., Manning, M., Chen, Z.,
Marquis, M., Averyt, K.B., Tignor, M., Miller, H.L. (Eds.), Climate Change 2007: The
Physical Science Basis; Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK; New York, NY, USA.
Rivera, J.A., Arnould, G., 2020. Evaluation of the ability of CMIP6 models to simulate
precipitation over Southwestern South America: climatic features and long-term
trends (1901–2014). Atmos. Res. 241, 104953 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
atmosres.2020.104953.
Ruan, Y., Yao, Z., Wang, R., Liu, Z., 2018. Ranking of CMIP5 GCM skills in simulating
observed precipitation over the lower Mekong Basin, using an improved score-based
method. Water. 10, 1868. https://doi.org/10.3390/w10121868.
Rupp, D.E., Abatzoglou, J.T., Hegewisch, K.C., Mote, P.W., 2013. Evaluation of CMIP5
20th century climate simulations for the Pacific Northwest USA. J. Geophys. Res.
Atmos. 118, 10884–10906. https://doi.org/10.1002/jgrd.50843.
Santhanasamy, C., Arcos González, P., Castro Delgado, R., 2021. (Un) natural disasters in
Southeast Asia. Emerg. Disast. Rep. 8, 1–52. https://doi.org/10.13140/
RG.2.2.26315.92963.
Schneider, U., Becker, A., Finger, P., Meyer-Christoffer, A., Ziese, M., 2018. GPCC full
data monthly product version 2018 at 0.5◦ : monthly land-surface precipitation from
rain-gauges built on GTS-based and historical data. In: Global Precipitation
Climatology Centre. https://doi.org/10.5676/DWD_GPCC/FD_M_V2018_050.
Stouffer, R.J., Eyring, V., Meehl, G.A., Bony, S., Senior, C., Stevens, B., Taylor, K.E., 2017.
CMIP5 Scientific Gaps and Recommendations for CMIP6. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc.
98, 95–105. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00013.1.
Strobl, E., 2019. The impact of typhoons on economic activity in the Philippines:
evidence from nightlight intensity. In: ADB Economics Working Paper Series.
https://doi.org/10.22617/WPS190278-2.
Su, F., Duan, X., Chen, D., Hao, Z., Cuo, L., 2013. Evaluation of the global climate models
in the CMIP5 over the Tibetan Plateau. J. Clim. 26, 3187–3208. https://doi.org/
10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00321.1.
Takahashi, H.G., Kamizawa, N., Nasuno, T., Yamada, Y., Kodama, C., Sugimoto, S.,
Satoh, M., 2020. Response of the Asian summer monsoon precipitation to global
16
Atmospheric Research 282 (2023) 106522
warming in a high-resolution global nonhydrostatic model. J. Clim. 33, 8147–8164.
https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0824.1.
Tan, C.T., Pereira, J.J., 2010. Climate change adaptation: an overview of Southeast Asia.
Asian J. Environ. Disaster Manage. 2, 371–395. https://doi.org/10.3850/
S1793924011000812.
Thoeun, H.C., 2015. Observed and projected changes in temperature and rainfall in
Cambodia. Weather Clim. Extrem. 7, 61–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
wace.2015.02.001.
Tomkratoke, S., Sirisup, S., 2022. Influence and variability of monsoon trough and front
on rainfall in Thailand. Int. J. Climatol. 42, 619–634. https://doi.org/10.1002/
joc.7263.
Torsri, K., Lin, Z., Dike, V.N., Thodsan, T., Wongsaming, P., 2022. Evaluation of spatial-
temporal characteristics of rainfall variations over Thailand inferred from different
gridded datasets. Water. 14, 1359. https://doi.org/10.3390/W14091359.
Torti, J., 2012. Floods in Southeast Asia: a health priority. J. Glob. Health 2, 020304.
https://doi.org/10.7939/R3VM42Z8K.
Trinh-Tuan, L., Konduru, R.T., Inoue, T., Ngo-Duc, T., Matsumoto, J., 2019. Autumn
Rainfall Increasing Trend in South Central Vietnam and its Association with Changes
in Vietnam’s East Sea Surface Temperature, 54. Geographical Reports of Tokyo
Metropolitan University, pp. 11–22.
Wang, L., Zhang, J., Shu, Z., Wang, Y., Bao, Z., Liu, C., Zhou, X., Wang, G., 2021.
Evaluation of the ability of CMIP6 Global climate models to simulate precipitation in
the Yellow River Basin, China. Front. Earth Sci. 9 (751974), 1–12. https://doi.org/
10.3389/feart.2021.751974.
World Bank and GFDRR, 2011. Vulnerability, Risk Reduction, and Adaptation to Climate
Change – Senegal. World Bank and GFDRR, Washington, DC.
Xin, X., Wu, T., Zhang, J., Yao, J., Fang, Y., 2020. Comparison of CMIP6 and CMIP5
simulations of precipitation in China and the East Asian summer monsoon. Int. J.
Climatol. 40, 6423–6440. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.6590.
Xuan, W., Ma, C., Kang, L., Gu, H., Pan, S., Xu, Y.-P., 2017. Evaluating historical
simulations of CMIP5 GCMs for key climatic variables in Zhejiang Province, China.
Theor. Appl. Climatol. 128, 207–222. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1704-7.
Yan, Y., Zhu, C., Liu, B., Jiang, S., 2021. Annual cycle of East Asian precipitation
simulated by CMIP6 models. Atmosphere. 12, 24. https://doi.org/10.3390/
atmos12010024.
Yazdandoost, F., Moradian, S., Izadi, A., Aghakouchak, A., 2021. Evaluation of CMIP6
precipitation simulations across different climatic zones: uncertainty and model
intercomparison. Atmos. Res. 250, 105369 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
atmosres.2020.105369.
Yuen, B., Kong, L., 2009. Climate change and urban planning in Southeast Asia. In: S.A.P.
I.E.N.S. 2.3. http://journals.openedition.org/sapiens/881.
Zhang, X., Hua, L., Jiang, D., 2022. Assessment of CMIP6 model performance for
temperature and precipitation in Xinjiang, China. Atmos. Ocean. Sci. Lett. 15,
100128 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aosl.2021.100128.
Zhou, W.C., Han, Z.Y., 2018. Assessing CMIP5 climate simulations and objective
selection of models over the Yellow River Basin. J. Meteorol. Environ. 34, 42–55.
https://doi.org/10.3969/j.issn.1673-503X.2018.06.005.
Zhu, H., Jiang, Z., Li, J., Li, W., Sun, C., Li, L., 2020. Does CMIP6 inspire more confidence
in simulating climate extremes over China? Adv. Atmos. Sci. 37, 1119–1132.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-020-9289-1.