Abstract: The spatiotemporal structures of the decadal abrupt changes (DACs) in the annually averaged field in the global oceanatmosphere system simulated by the coupled climate models (e.g., CCSM3, ECHAM5/MPI-OM, GFDL-CM2.1, FGOALS-g1.0 and UKMOHadGEM1) are evaluated in this study. Since 1880, these five coupled climate models haven’t captured the dominant mode—the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) of the distribution of the DAC episodes in the global sea surface temperature (SST) field and the planetaryscale structure of the distribution of the DAC episodes in the sea level pressure (SLP) field. Among the 1970s-1990s periods, the spatiotemporal characteristics of the DACs of the 500 hPa tropical air temperature and geopotential height in 1970s, those of the SLP DACs over the North Pole in 1980s, and those of the DACs in both the northern and southern subtropical air temperatures were well simulated by the UKMOHadGEM1 model, and those of the DACs in 1990s of SST and 500 hPa air temperature by the GFDL-CM2.1 model. There are the planetaryscale atmospheric DACs which occurred in other models. It means that these five coupled climate models could depict the mechanisms of the planetaryscale atmospheric DACs in themselves, although the spatiotemporal structures of these DACs are not consistent with the actual ones. The decreased DACs in 1990s in the stratosphere, which maybe were caused by the Pinatubo eruption in 1991 (Xiao, 2008), are well simulated by the GFDL-CM2.1 and ECHAM5/MPIOM models, partly by the CCSM3 and UKMOHadGEM1 models, and not by the FGOALSg1.0 model. According to the analysis in this study, this may result from the lack of consideration of the influences of the eruption or ozone in the FGOALSg1.0 model.