1. Recently amplified arctic warming has contributed to a continual global warming trend
- Author
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Xin Chen, Ying Xu, Jiansong Zhang, Jianbin Huang, Yao Yao, Lei Wang, Xiangdong Zhang, Mingju Hao, Yanluan Lin, Yong Luo, Suping Nie, Zongci Zhao, Qiyi Zhang, and Yizhou Yin
- Subjects
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,Global warming ,Extinction risk from global warming ,Climate change ,Empirical orthogonal functions ,Global warming hiatus ,Environmental Science (miscellaneous) ,Hiatus ,010502 geochemistry & geophysics ,01 natural sciences ,Rate of increase ,Arctic ,Climatology ,Environmental science ,Social Sciences (miscellaneous) ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences - Abstract
The existence and magnitude of the recently suggested global warming hiatus, or slowdown, have been strongly debated1–3. Although various physical processes4–8 have been examined to elucidate this phenomenon, the accuracy and completeness of observational data that comprise global average surface air temperature (SAT) datasets is a concern9,10. In particular, these datasets lack either complete geographic coverage or in situ observations over the Arctic, owing to the sparse observational network in this area 9 . As a consequence, the contribution of Arctic warming to global SAT changes may have been underestimated, leading to an uncertainty in the hiatus debate. Here, we constructed a new Arctic SAT dataset using the most recently updated global SATs 2 and a drifting buoys based Arctic SAT dataset 11 through employing the ‘data interpolating empirical orthogonal functions’ method 12 . Our estimate of global SAT rate of increase is around 0.112 °C per decade, instead of 0.05 °C per decade from IPCC AR5 1 , for 1998–2012. Analysis of this dataset shows that the amplified Arctic warming over the past decade has significantly contributed to a continual global warming trend, rather than a hiatus or slowdown. The Arctic is under-represented in surface temperature datasets and this could affect estimates of global warming. A new dataset with greater coverage of the Arctic shows a higher warming rate of 0.112 °C per decade compared to 0.005 °C from IPCC AR5.
- Published
- 2017