Surface air temperature variability in global climate models

New results from the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) and multiple global reanalysis datasets are used to investigate the relationship between the mean and standard deviation in the surface air temperature. A combination of a land-sea mask and orographic filter were used to investigate the geographic region with the strongest correlation and in all cases this was found to be for low-lying over-land locations. This result is consistent with the expectation that differences in the effective heat capacity of the atmosphere are an important factor in determining the surface air temperature response to forcing.
6 pages, 2 figures