Development of CAS-ESM_MMF: improving East Asian summer precipitation simulation with a Multiscale Modeling Framework

Abstract. Traditional global climate models (GCMs) exhibit substantial biases in simulating precipitation over East Asia, largely due to uncertainties in convection parameterizations. To address this issue, we implement a Multiscale Modeling Framework (MMF), which explicitly resolves convection in a cloud resolving model, into the atmospheric component of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Earth System Model (CAS-ESM). Simulations using CAS-ESM with and without MMF reveal that the MMF implementation significantly reduces the wet bias around the Tibetan Plateau and the dry bias over South China and Southeast Asia. The intensity–frequency characteristics of precipitation are more realistically represented in the MMF version. In addition, the CAS-ESM with MMF better captures the monthly evolution of precipitation and simulates a more realistic seasonal migration of the East Asian rainband, albeit with a somewhat step-wise progression. Further enhancement is achieved by incorporating a convective momentum transport (CMT) parameterization, typically neglected in previous MMF implementations. This inclusion leads to a smoother northward migration of the rainband, more consistent with observations. Comparison with ERA5 reanalysis suggests that this improvement is associated with a more accurate simulation of the western Pacific subtropical high. These results demonstrate that MMF, especially when combined with CMT, substantially improves the simulation of East Asian precipitation. This modeling advancement offers a promising approach for evaluating regional precipitation responses to future climate change.