The evolutions of Asian summer monsoon (ASM) are detected and evaluated based on the models in Couple Model Intercomparison Projects Phase-3 and Phase-5 (CMIP3 and CMIP5) for the 20 th Century climate simulation (20c3m and Historical runs, respectively). Considering that the individual models have various biases in rainfall amount simulation, instead of applying a fixed rainfall criterion as used in observation, we use model-dependent rainfall criteria to identify the simulated ASM onset, retreat, and duration. This model-dependent criterion is defined as the height in cumulative distribution function (CDF) of simulated precipitation that the observed criterion occurs. Based on this method, the multi-model ensembles (MMEs) of CMIP3 and CMIP5 both show a delayed monsoon onset but an earlier retreat relative to the observations, indicating that models tend to underestimate the monsoon period. The MME results show a skill in capturing the ASM domain which features monsoon rainfall characteristics, whereas a large spread is found among individual models. Overall, the state-of-the-art CMIP5 models show slightly improvements from the CMIP3 models in the simulations of ASM domain and evolutions. Models with a hybrid method based on bulk mass flux and CAPE closure schemes perform better than models with other types of convection parameterization.(Citation: Tung, Y., C. Chen, and P. Hsu, 2014: Evolutions of Asian summer monsoon in the CMIP3 and CMIP5 models. SOLA, 10, 88−92,

The annual daily maximum precipitation (rx1day) is widely used to represent extreme events and is an important parameter in climate change studies. However, the climate variability in rx1day is sensitive to outliers and has difficulty representing the characteristics of large areas. We propose to use the probability index (PI), based on the cumulative density function (CDF) of a generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution to fit and standardize the rx1day to represent extreme event records in this study. A good correlation between the area-averaged PIs of the observed stations and those of the gridded dataset can be found over Taiwan. From the past PI records, there is no distinct trend in western Taiwan before the end of the 20 th century, but a climate regime change happened during 2002 -2003. The dual change effects from both the variance and linear trend of extreme events are identified over the northeastern and southern parts of Taiwan, along with the island's central and southern regions, showing different abrupt changing trends and intensity. The PI can also be calculated using climate projection data to represent the characteristics of future extreme changes. The climate variability of PIs on the present (ALL) and future (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) scenarios were evaluated using the 16 Couple Model Intercomparison Projects Phase-5 models (CMIP5). The simulated present fluctuations in PIs are smaller than those of actual observations. In the 21 st century, the RCP8.5 scenario shows that the PI significantly increases by 10% during the first half of the century, and 14% by the end of the century.