The rogue nature of hiatuses in a global warming climate
The rogue nature of hiatuses in a global warming climate
The nature of rogue events is their unlikelihood and the recent unpredicted decade-long slowdown in surface warming, the so-called hiatus, may be such an event. However, given decadal variability in climate, global surface temperatures were never expected to increase monotonically with increasing radiative forcing. Here surface air temperature from 20 climate models is analyzed to estimate the historical and future likelihood of hiatuses and “surges” (faster than expected warming), showing that the global hiatus of the early 21st century was extremely unlikely. A novel analysis of future climate scenarios suggests that hiatuses will almost vanish and surges will strongly intensify by 2100 under a “business as usual” scenario. For “CO2 stabilisation” scenarios, hiatus, and surge characteristics revert to typical 1940s values. These results suggest to study the hiatus of the early 21st century and future reoccurrences as rogue events, at the limit of the variability of current climate modelling capability.
global warming hiatus, multimodel analysis, global warming surge, probabilistic analysis
8169-8177
Sevellec, F.
01569d6c-65b0-4270-af2a-35b0a77c9140
Sinha, B.
544b5a07-3d74-464b-9470-a68c69bd722e
Skliris, N.
07af7484-2e14-49aa-9cd3-1979ea9b064e
24 August 2016
Sevellec, F.
01569d6c-65b0-4270-af2a-35b0a77c9140
Sinha, B.
544b5a07-3d74-464b-9470-a68c69bd722e
Skliris, N.
07af7484-2e14-49aa-9cd3-1979ea9b064e
Sevellec, F., Sinha, B. and Skliris, N.
(2016)
The rogue nature of hiatuses in a global warming climate.
Geophysical Research Letters, 43 (15), .
(doi:10.1002/2016GL068950).
Abstract
The nature of rogue events is their unlikelihood and the recent unpredicted decade-long slowdown in surface warming, the so-called hiatus, may be such an event. However, given decadal variability in climate, global surface temperatures were never expected to increase monotonically with increasing radiative forcing. Here surface air temperature from 20 climate models is analyzed to estimate the historical and future likelihood of hiatuses and “surges” (faster than expected warming), showing that the global hiatus of the early 21st century was extremely unlikely. A novel analysis of future climate scenarios suggests that hiatuses will almost vanish and surges will strongly intensify by 2100 under a “business as usual” scenario. For “CO2 stabilisation” scenarios, hiatus, and surge characteristics revert to typical 1940s values. These results suggest to study the hiatus of the early 21st century and future reoccurrences as rogue events, at the limit of the variability of current climate modelling capability.
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Accepted/In Press date: 15 July 2016
e-pub ahead of print date: 8 August 2016
Published date: 24 August 2016
Keywords:
global warming hiatus, multimodel analysis, global warming surge, probabilistic analysis
Organisations:
Marine Systems Modelling, Physical Oceanography
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 401186
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/401186
ISSN: 0094-8276
PURE UUID: 694bfc6c-f55a-4594-871f-1b2fc89ecfc3
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Date deposited: 05 Oct 2016 12:57
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:39
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Author:
B. Sinha
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