Simulated Relationship between Wintertime ENSO and East Asian Summer Rainfall: From CMIP3 to CMIP6

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events have a strong influence on East Asian summer rainfall (EASR). This paper investigates the simulated ENSO-EASR relationship in CMIP6 models and compares the results with those in CMIP3 and CMIP5 models. In general, the CMIP6 models show almost no appreciable progress in representing the ENSO-EASR relationship compared with the CMIP5 models. The correlation coefficients in the CMIP6 models are relatively smaller and exhibit a slightly greater intermodel diversity than those in the CMIP5 models. Three physical processes related to the delayed effect of ENSO on EASR are further analyzed. Results show that, firstly, the relationships between ENSO and the tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) sea surface temperature (SST) in the CMIP6 models are more realistic, stronger, and have less intermodel diversity than those in the CMIP3 and CMIP5 models. Secondly, the teleconnections between the TIO SST and Philippine Sea convection (PSC) in the CMIP6 models are almost the same as those in the CMIP5 models, and stronger than those in the CMIP3 models. Finally, the CMIP3, CMIP5, and CMIP6 models exhibit essentially identical capabilities in representing the PSC-EASR relationship. Almost all the three generations of models underestimate the ENSO-EASR, TIO SST-PSC, and PSC-EASR relationships. Moreover, almost all the CMIP6 models that successfully capture the significant TIO SST-PSC relationship realistically simulate the ENSO-EASR relationship and vice versa, which is, however, not the case in the CMIP5 models.