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Realistically representing the Arctic amplification in global climate models (GCMs) represents a key to accurately predict the climate system's response to increasing anthropogenic forcings. We examined the amplified Arctic warming over the past century simulated by 36 state‐of‐the‐art GCMs against observation. We found a clear difference between the simulations and the observation in terms of the evolution of the secular warming rates. The observed rates of the secular Arctic warming increase from 0.14 °C/10a in the early 1890s to 0.21 °C/10a in the mid‐2010s, while the GCMs show a negligible trend to 0.35 °C/10a at the corresponding times. The overestimation of the secular warming rate in the GCMs starts from the mid‐twentieth century and aggravates with time. Further analysis indicates that the overestimation mainly comes from the exaggerated heating contribution from the Arctic sea ice melting. This result implies that the future secular Arctic warming may have been over‐projected. Key Points: The anthropogenic emissions most likely determined the nonlinear, secular trend of Arctic warming during the past centuryState‐of‐the‐art climate models overestimate the secular Arctic warming rate since the mid‐twentieth centuryAggravating secular warming rate with time may lead to over-projection of the future Arctic warming [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]