The reliability of these optimistic projections on East African future hydroclimate and their suitability to serve as the foundation for the development community, however, depend on the performance of the models in reproducing past and current East African hydroclimate. By examining the performance of both SST-forced (AMIP-style) models and the coupled models used in the CMIP5 historical experiment (CMIP-style) in simulating the East African long rains (March--May, MAM), \citet{Yang_2014} showed that the SST-forced models are in general able to capture the observed decadal variability of the long rains, which is primarily driven by the SST variations over the Pacific Ocean. The coupled models, which are used for the 21st century climate projections, however, generally fail to  capture the correct long rains-SST relationship on decadal or longer time scales. Moreover, the coupled models misrepresent the East African rainfall annual cycle by overestimating the short rains (October--December, OND) and underestimating the long rains, which has also been  reported for the CMIP3 coupled models \citep{Anyah_2012}. The cause of the rainfall annual cycle bias in the CMIP5 coupled models and its implications for the projections from these coupled models are still not clear.