This study investigates the influence of different types of El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the properties of tropical cyclone (TC) rapid intensification (RI) over the western North Pacific (WNP). The RI numbers during all types of ENSO events have no significant difference from that of neutral years, except that eastern Pacific (EP) El Niño corresponds to fewer RI cases. The most robust response of RI properties is occurrence position. The mean RI occurrence position in La Niña events shifts northwards by about 2° in latitude during the peak TC season (July–September), which may be related to the northwestward shift of TC genesis positions. On the other hand, the mean RI occurrence positions during EP El Niño and La Niña events in the late TC season (October–December) shift westwards by about 10° and 14° in longitude, respectively. This westward shift in RI occurrence positions is mainly caused by the favorable conditions over the western part of the WNP in the late TC season. During October–December, EP El Niño shifts to a La Niña phase and warms the upper ocean of the western part of the WNP. La Niña events result in similar upper ocean conditions because they maintain negative phases during October–December. The warmed upper ocean is also accompanied by a moistened mid‐troposphere and weakened vertical wind shear, which are favorable for RI occurrence.

Previous studies have reported that the tropospheric climate shifted around the 2000s, but the recent trend in the stratospheric wave intensity (SWI) is still unclear. The results in this study show that the SWI in December during 2001–2015 weakens, which is opposite to that during 1979–2000, implying a shift around the 2000s. The weakened SWI is dominated by its wave number‐1 component, which is related to the wave propagation impeded by the decreased refractive index at high latitudes and the weakened wave activity in the troposphere. Changes in refractive index are mainly contributed by changes in the meridional potential vorticity gradient via the barotropic term. This shift in the wave number‐1 waves leads to a shift in the stratospheric Arctic temperature, that is, warming (cooling) during 1979–2000 (2001–2015), implying that similar shifting phenomena may appear regardless of the continued greenhouse gas emissions.

Using 26 climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), climatology and the interannual variability of the annual mean Hadley circulation are evaluated. The results show that most of 26 models perform well in simulating the spatial structure of the climatology of the annual mean Hadley circulation, but the results derived from these models are generally weaker than that derived from the reanalysis dataset. Eighteen models can properly simulate well the asymmetric mode and symmetric mode of the annual mean Hadley circulation variability. Two models can only simulate asymmetric mode or symmetric mode and the other two models simulate reversed sequences of asymmetric mode and symmetric mode. The possible reason why some models cannot properly simulate the asymmetric mode and symmetric mode is that these models do not properly simulate the structure of zonal mean sea surface temperature (SST). Especially, not properly simulating variances of symmetric and asymmetric components of the SSTA will lead to reversed sequence of symmetric mode and asymmetric mode. And not properly simulated either symmetric or asymmetric component of the SSTA will lead to inability in simulating symmetric mode or asymmetric mode. On the other hand, some models properly simulate the asymmetric mode and symmetric mode, but do not properly simulate the responses to SST change. These models can not reflect the air sea coupling processes in associated with the Hadley circulation, therefore they should be taken more care when classify the models into groups