The semi-annual oscillation in mean sea level pressure and the structure of the double jet in the Southern Hemisphere have been investigated for a wide range of AMIP models after consideration of the quality of the simulated mean climate for middle and high latitudes.
No single model performs well in all above aspects of the circulation in the Southern Hemisphere with considerable variation on model performance over different oceanic basins. However the best performing models show an encouraging level of simulation capability in middle to high Southern latitudes.
The ability of some AMIP models to simulate the position and strength of the storm tracks (as defined by the band pass filtered 500 hpa geopotential variance) in the Southern Hemisphere has also been assessed using daily model output. Also the relation of the simulated storm tracks to other eddy statistics is explored.
A few models do surprisingly well at simulating the storm tracks.