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Different climate response persistence causes warming trend unevenness at continental scales

Nature Climate Change volume 12, pages 343–349 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Global warming exhibits distinct differences at continental scales, yet whether models capture these differences is unclear. Here, we show that Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 climate models underestimate warming unevenness for China and the United States, possibly leading to a biased estimation of anthropogenic influence on warming over the two regions. Observational records suggest that the surface air temperature warming trends over China are 1.53 ± 0.10 and 1.38 ± 0.12 times those of the United States for 1900–2017 and 1951–2017, respectively. We find that surface air temperature changes over China seem more sensitive to external forcing owing to stronger long-range persistence, leading to substantially different warming trends between China and the United States. Our study provides insight into the drivers of contemporary climate warming that could help in devising climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies for the future.

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Fig. 1: Distribution of the SAT warming trends and the differences.
Fig. 2: Separation of the continental SAT series and comparison of the trends between observations and the CMIP6 large ensemble models.
Fig. 3: Comparison of anomalies computed from observations, the 52 CMIP6 models and the multimodel ensemble.
Fig. 4: Comparison of the persistence of climate response over China and the United States.

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Data availability

All supporting data77 used to create figures are available through the Figshare repository at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19127261.v3. C-LSAT2.0 can be downloaded from the PANGAEA repository (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.919574)78 and from http://www.gwpu.net/h-col-103.html. Other benchmark global SAT datasets, such as CRUTEM5.0, GHCN, GISTEMP and BE, can be downloaded from KNMI’s Climate Explorer website (http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs2.cgi?id=someone@somewhere). C-LSAT HR can be accessed from the corresponding author upon request. The reconstruction data of the regional SAT changes at continental scales are from the PAGES 2k Programme and are available at the NOAA NCEI website (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/). The basemap data used to create figures were downloaded at http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

All codes77 used to set up model simulations, analyse data and/or create figures are available through the Figshare repository at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19127261.v3.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 41975105, to Q.L.) and the National Key R&D Programs of China (grant nos. 2018YFC1507705 and 2017YFC1502301, to Q.L.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Atmospheric Sciences and Key Laboratory of Tropical Atmosphere-Ocean System, Ministry of Education, Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai, China

    Qingxiang Li, Bosi Sheng, Jiaying Huang, Zhaoyang Song, Liya Chao, Wenbin Sun, Yang Yang, Boyang Jiao, Ziyou Guo, Longshi Liao, Xuqian Li, Chenglong Sun, Wen Li & Wenjie Dong

  2. Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai, China

    Qingxiang Li, Zhaoyang Song & Wenjie Dong

  3. School of Geosciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Chao Li

  4. National Centers for Environmental Information, NOAA, Asheville, NC, USA

    Boyin Huang

  5. Climatic Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    Phil Jones

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Contributions

Q.L. and W.D. designed the research; Q.L., B.S. and J.H. performed the analysis with input from C.L., L.C., W.S., Y.Y., B.J., Z.G., L.L., X.L., C.S. and W.L.; Q.L., B.H., W.D., P.J., Z.S. and C.L. drafted the manuscript, and all authors participated in editing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Qingxiang Li.

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Li, Q., Sheng, B., Huang, J. et al. Different climate response persistence causes warming trend unevenness at continental scales. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 343–349 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01313-9

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