TY - JOUR
T1 - New insights into natural variability and anthropogenic forcing of global/regional climate evolution
AU - Wu, Tongwen
AU - Hu, Aixue
AU - Gao, Feng
AU - Zhang, Jie
AU - Meehl, Gerald A.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s).
PY - 2019/12/1
Y1 - 2019/12/1
N2 - Because of natural decadal climate variability—Atlantic multi-decadal variability (AMV) and Pacific decadal variability (PDV) —the increase of global mean surface air temperature (GMSAT) has not been monotonic although atmospheric greenhouse-gas (GHG) concentrations have been increasing continuously. It has always been a challenge regarding how to separate the effects of these two factors on GMSAT. Here, we find a physically based quasi-linear relationship between transient GMSAT and well-mixed GHG changes for both observations and model simulations. With AMV and PDV defined as the combination of variability over both the Atlantic and Pacific basins after the GHG-related trend is removed, we show that the observed GMSAT changes from 1880 to 2017 on multi-decadal or longer timescales receive contributions of about 70% from GHGs, while AMV and PDV together account for roughly 30%. Moreover, AMV contributes more to time-evolving GMSAT on multi-decadal and longer timescales, but PDV leads AMV on decadal timescales with comparable contributions to GMSAT trends.
AB - Because of natural decadal climate variability—Atlantic multi-decadal variability (AMV) and Pacific decadal variability (PDV) —the increase of global mean surface air temperature (GMSAT) has not been monotonic although atmospheric greenhouse-gas (GHG) concentrations have been increasing continuously. It has always been a challenge regarding how to separate the effects of these two factors on GMSAT. Here, we find a physically based quasi-linear relationship between transient GMSAT and well-mixed GHG changes for both observations and model simulations. With AMV and PDV defined as the combination of variability over both the Atlantic and Pacific basins after the GHG-related trend is removed, we show that the observed GMSAT changes from 1880 to 2017 on multi-decadal or longer timescales receive contributions of about 70% from GHGs, while AMV and PDV together account for roughly 30%. Moreover, AMV contributes more to time-evolving GMSAT on multi-decadal and longer timescales, but PDV leads AMV on decadal timescales with comparable contributions to GMSAT trends.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85082104018
U2 - 10.1038/s41612-019-0075-7
DO - 10.1038/s41612-019-0075-7
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85082104018
SN - 2397-3722
VL - 2
JO - npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
JF - npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
IS - 1
M1 - 18
ER -