The capability to reproduce tropical cyclones (TCs) realistically is important for climate models. A recent study proposed a method for quantitative evaluation of climate model simulations of TC track characteristics in a specific basin, which can be used to rank multiple climate models based on their performance. As an extension of this method, we propose a more comprehensive method here to evaluate the capability of climate models in simulating multi-faceted characteristics of global TCs. Compared with the original method, the new method considers the capability of climate models in simulating not only TC tracks, but also TC intensity and frequency. Moreover, the new method is applicable to the global domain. In this study, we apply this method to evaluate the performance of eight climate models that participated in Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. It is found that, for the overall performance of global TC simulations, the CSIRO Mk3.6.0 model performs the best, followed by GFDL CM3, MPI-ESM-LR and MRI-CGCM3 models. Moreover, the capability of each of these models in simulating global TCs differs substantially over different ocean basins.

中文翻译：

---

一种评估气候模式模拟全球热带气旋性能的定量方法

真实再现热带气旋 (TC) 的能力对于气候模型很重要。最近的一项研究提出了一种定量评估特定盆地 TC 轨迹特征的气候模型模拟的方法，该方法可用于根据其性能对多个气候模型进行排序。作为该方法的扩展，我们在此提出了一种更全面的方法来评估气候模型在模拟全球 TC 多方面特征方面的能力。与原方法相比，新方法不仅考虑了气候模式模拟台风轨迹的能力，还考虑了台风强度和频率的模拟能力。此外，新方法适用于全局域。在这项研究中，我们应用这种方法来评估参与耦合模型比对项目第 5 阶段的八个气候模型的性能。发现，对于全球TC模拟的整体性能，CSIRO Mk3.6.0模型表现最好，其次是GFDL CM3、MPI-ESM-LR和MRI-CGCM3模型。此外，这些模型中的每一个在模拟全球 TC 的能力在不同的海洋盆地中存在很大差异。