Interannual atmospheric variability in the Northern Hemisphere in winter with respect to tropical SST variations such as El Niño is well represented by many observational and modeling studies. In this paper we first show that the MRI coupled GCM can reveal such an atmosphere-ocean coupled mode as obtained by the singular value decomposition (SVD) analysis. This mode is similar to the observed mode in the Pacific-North American region in the past 47 years.
The SVD analysis of the AMIP run with the MRI AGCM shows that the standard model has a quite different mode to the observed for the period 1979-1988. Differences are found over the western Pacific, over the Eurasian continent and over the Arctic. A tuning of the gravity wave drag parameter yields different model climatology, particularly for the subtropical jet in the Pacific, and a teleconnection pattern in the Pacific/North American region. However the simulated SVD modes are not so different from each other. The tropospheric version of the model shows a response more similar to the observed. These differences are discussed together with whether this 10-year period can be used to verify the GCMs with respect to their performance on interannual variability.