Prediction of monsoon changes in the coming decades is important for infrastructure planning and sustainable economic development. The decadal prediction involves both natural decadal variability and anthropogenic forcing. Hitherto, the causes of the decadal variability of Northern Hemisphere summer monsoon (NHSM) are largely unknown because the monsoons over Asia, West Africa, and North America have been studied primarily on a regional basis, which is unable to identify coherent decadal changes and the overriding controls on planetary scales. Here, we show that, during the recent global warming of about 0.4°C since the late 1970s, a coherent decadal change of precipitation and circulation emerges in the entirety of the NHSM system. Surprisingly, the NHSM as well as the Hadley and Walker circulations have all shown substantial intensification, with a striking increase of NHSM rainfall by 9.5% per degree of global warming. This is unexpected from recent theoretical prediction and model projections of the 21st century. The intensification is primarily attributed to a mega-El Niño/Southern Oscillation (a leading mode of interannual-to-interdecadal variation of global sea surface temperature) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and further influenced by hemispherical asymmetric global warming. These factors driving the present changes of the NHSM system are instrumental for understanding and predicting future decadal changes and determining the proportions of climate change that are attributable to anthropogenic effects and long-term internal variability in the complex climate system.

The global monsoon (GM) is a defining feature of the annual variation of Earth's climate system. Quantifying and understanding the present-day monsoon precipitation change are crucial for prediction of its future and reflection of its past. Here we show that regional monsoons are coordinated not only by external solar forcing but also by internal feedback processes such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). From one monsoon year (May to the next April) to the next, most continental monsoon regions, separated by vast areas of arid trade winds and deserts, vary in a cohesive manner driven by ENSO. The ENSO has tighter regulation on the northern hemisphere summer monsoon (NHSM) than on the southern hemisphere summer monsoon (SHSM). More notably, the GM precipitation (GMP) has intensified over the past three decades mainly due to the significant upward trend in NHSM. The intensification of the GMP originates primarily from an enhanced east-west thermal contrast in the Pacific Ocean, which is coupled with a rising pressure in the subtropical eastern Pacific and decreasing pressure over the IndoPacific warm pool. While this mechanism tends to amplify both the NHSM and SHSM, the stronger (weaker) warming trend in the NH (SH) creates a hemispheric thermal contrast, which favors intensification of the NHSM but weakens the SHSM. The enhanced Pacific zonal thermal contrast is largely a result of natural variability, whilst the enhanced hemispherical thermal contrast is likely due to anthropogenic forcing. We found that the enhanced global summer monsoon not only amplifies the annual cycle of tropical climate but also promotes directly a ''wetgets-wetter'' trend pattern and indirectly a ''dry-gets-drier'' trend pattern through coupling with deserts and trade winds. The mechanisms recognized in this study suggest a way forward for understanding past and future changes of the GM in terms of its driven mechanisms.

As a result of global warming, precipitation is likely to increase in high latitudes and the tropics and to decrease in already dry subtropical regions. The absolute magnitude and regional details of such changes, however, remain intensely debated. As is well known from El Niño studies, sea-surface-temperature gradients across the tropical Pacific Ocean can strongly influence global rainfall. Palaeoproxy evidence indicates that the difference between the warm west Pacific and the colder east Pacific increased in past periods when the Earth warmed as a result of increased solar radiation. In contrast, in most model projections of future greenhouse warming this gradient weakens. It has not been clear how to reconcile these two findings. Here we show in climate model simulations that the tropical Pacific sea-surface-temperature gradient increases when the warming is due to increased solar radiation and decreases when it is due to increased greenhouse-gas forcing. For the same global surface temperature increase the latter pattern produces less rainfall, notably over tropical land, which explains why in the model the late twentieth century is warmer than in the Medieval Warm Period (around AD 1000-1250) but precipitation is less. This difference is consistent with the global tropospheric energy budget, which requires a balance between the latent heat released in precipitation and radiative cooling. The tropospheric cooling is less for increased greenhouse gases, which add radiative absorbers to the troposphere, than for increased solar heating, which is concentrated at the Earth's surface. Thus warming due to increased greenhouse gases produces a climate signature different from that of warming due to solar radiation changes.

We investigate the future changes of AsianAustralian monsoon (AAM) system projected by 20 climate models that participated in the phase five of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). A metrics for evaluation of the model's performance on AAM precipitation climatology and variability is used to select a subset of seven best models. The CMIP5 models are more skillful than the CMIP3 models in terms of the AAM metrics. The future projections made by the selected multimodel mean suggest the following changes by the end of the 21st century. (1) The total AAM precipitation (as well as the land and oceanic components) will increase significantly (by 4.5 %/°C) mainly due to the increases in Indian summer monsoon (5.0 %/°C) and East Asian summer monsoon (6.4 %/°C) rainfall; the Australian summer monsoon rainfall will increase moderately by 2.6 %/°C.The ''warm land-cool ocean'' favors the entire AAM precipitation increase by generation of an east-west asymmetry in the sea level pressure field. On the other hand, the warm Northern Hemisphere-cool Southern Hemisphere induced hemispheric SLP difference favors the ASM but reduces the Australian summer monsoon rainfall. The combined effects explain the differences between the Asian and Australian monsoon changes. (2) The low-level tropical AAM circulation will weaken significantly (by 2.3 %/°C ) due to atmospheric stabilization that overrides the effect of increasing moisture convergence. Different from the CMIP3 analysis, the EA subtropical summer monsoon circulation will increase by 4.4 %/°C. (3) The Asian monsoon domain over the land area will expand by about 10 %. (4) The spatial structures of the leading mode of interannual variation of AAM precipitation will not change appreciably but the ENSO-AAM relationship will be significantly enhanced.