“…Thus, a reasonable projection of the multidecadal changes of AO should be helpful to predict a more realistic SAT change in the NEA on the time scale of 30-50 years. Previous studies show that the circulation and SAT variations in the SEA are less affected by AO (e.g., Gong et al, 2017;Gong, Wang, Chen, & Nath, 2018;Gong, Wang, Zhou, et al, 2018;He et al, 2017), and thus, the reasons for decreasing SLP trend and corresponding increasing SAT in the SEA including the TP need to be further investigated in future studies. It is noted that the time period analyzed in this study is 40 years, and thus, to what extent internal variability contributes to the SAT trend in East Asia in a longer or shorter time scale should be further investigated in the future.…”