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Global Monsoon Precipitation Simulations
Reference
Zhang, L. and Zhou, T. 2014. An assessment of improvements in global monsoon precipitation simulation in FGOALS-s2. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences 31: 165-178.

Background
In essentially all climate-modeling programs that seem never to end, periodic assessments are typically made to see how their "new-and-improved" versions have hopefully gotten better at representing reality; and it is within this framework that the probing study of Zhang and Zhou was conducted.

What was done
Very simply, in the words of the two authors, "the performance of Version 2 of the Flexible Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System model (FGOALS-s2) in simulating global monsoon precipitation (GMP) was evaluated."

What was learned
Zhang and Zhou report that "the main deficiency of FGOALS-s2 is that the northwestern Pacific monsoon (NWPM) has [1] a weaker monsoon mode and [2] stronger negative pattern in spring-fall asymmetric mode," that "the smaller NWPM domain in FGOALS-s2 is due to [3] its simulated colder SST over the western Pacific warm pool," and that [4] "the simulated precipitation anomaly over the South African monsoon region-South Indian Ocean during La Niņa years is opposite to the observation," which leads to [5/6] "stronger upper-troposphere (lower-troposphere) divergence (convergence) over the Indian Ocean, and [7/8] artificial vertical ascent (decent) over the Southwest Indian Ocean (South African monsoon region), inducing [9/10] local excessive (deficient) rainfall."

What it means
In spite of improvements in other modeling aspects that may have been made in progressing from FGOALS-s1 to FGOALS-s2, it would appear that there is still much that remains to be done before the newest version is truly ready for what could be called prime-time application.

Reviewed 19 March 2014