Paper Reviewed
Hasson, S., Pascale, S., Lucarini, V. and Bohner, J. 2016. Seasonal cycle of precipitation over major river basins in South and Southeast Asia: A review of the CMIP5 climate models data for present climate and future climate projections. Atmospheric Research 180: 42-63.

"Using state-of-the-art methods," in the words of Hasson et al. (2016), the four researchers -- hailing from Germany, Pakistan and the UK -- employed state-of-the-art methods to determine how well the latest generation of climate models included in the fifth assessment report of the IPCC (2013) are able to describe "the seasonality of precipitation regimes associated with two large-scale circulation modes: the monsoon system and westerly disturbances over the major river basins of South and Southeast Asia."

This work revealed, according to their report, that (1) "some CMIP5 models simulate unrealistic seasonal cycles of precipitation," that (2-4) "such models perform worst in terms of [i] timing of the monsoon onset, [ii] monsoon duration and [iii] the RFA [rapid fractional accumulation] slope," that (5) "no single model was found satisfactory against observations," and that (6) "overall, the models feature large biases for [i] precipitation and for [ii] its spatio-temporal distribution."

Consequently, as a result of these and a number of still other considerations, Hasson et al. conclude that (7) "state-of-the-art coupled models need to be improved [i] enormously and [ii] meaningfully, particularly for the representation of region-specific geophysical characteristics and their interaction with the physical processes that are presently [i] absent completely or [ii] represented inadequately." And so the quest continues.