The Implication of Ural Blocking on the East Asian Winter Climate as Inferred From CMIP5 Models

The state-of-the-arts CMIP5 general circulation models (GCMs) are invaluable for evaluating the global and regional climate in present and future. However, they generally do not have good performance of simulating the occurrence of blocking in different sectors. In-depth analyses are needed for analyzing this deficiency because blocking is a crucial driver of extreme climate. In particular, blocking near the Ural Mountains (called Ural blocking) plays a crucial role in the East Asian winter climate. In boreal winter, the Ural blocking dynamically enhances the Siberian high and potentially results in severe cold air outbreaks in East Asia. Occasionally, the recurrence of Ural blocking potentially causes an extremely cold period in the region, such as the 2008 Chinese snowstorm. This calls for the need of assessing the role of Ural blocking in the East Asian winter climate in a changing climate.In our presentation, we will first analyze the cause and effect of the discrepancy of Ural blocking simulations in the historical scenario of CMIP5 GCMs. Then, we will evaluate the uncertainties of the East Asian winter climate in future based on the projection of Ural blocking in RCP4.5 and 8.5 scenarios in the 21st century.