Detecting climatic change signals: Are there any fingerprints'

Journal Article · Fri Jan 21 04:00:00 EST 1994 · Science (Washington, D.C.); (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1126/science.263.5145.341· OSTI ID:7239911

Schneider, S H ^[1]

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1. Stanford Univ., CA (United States)

Projected changes in the Earth's climate can be driven from a combined set of forcing factors consisting of regionally heterogeneous anthropogenic and natural aerosols and land use changes, as well as global-scale influences from solar variability and transient increases in human-produced greenhouse gases. Thus, validation of climate model projections that are driven only by increases in greenhouse gases can be inconsistent when one attempts the validation by looking for a regional or time-evolving fingerprint' of such projected changes in real climatic data. Until climate models are driven by time-evolving, combined, multiple, and heterogeneous forcing factors, the best global climatic change fingerprint' will probably remain a many-decades average of hemispheric- to global-scale trends in surface air temperatures. Century-long global warming (or cooling) trends of 0.5[degrees]C appear to have occurred infrequently over the past several thousand years - perhaps only once or twice a millennium, as proxy records suggest. This implies an 80 to 90 percent heuristic likelihood that the 20th-century 0.5 [+-] 0.2[degrees]C warming trend is not a wholly natural climatic fluctuation.

• OSTI ID: 7239911
• Journal Information: Science (Washington, D.C.); (United States), Journal Name: Science (Washington, D.C.); (United States) Vol. 263:5145; ISSN SCIEAS; ISSN 0036-8075
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
540110*
CARBON COMPOUNDS
CARBON DIOXIDE
CARBON OXIDES
CHALCOGENIDES
CLIMATIC CHANGE
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DETECTION
EARTH ATMOSPHERE
FORECASTING
GENERAL CIRCULATION MODELS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MATHEMATICS
MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS
OXIDES
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
SIMULATION
STATISTICS
SULFUR COMPOUNDS
SULFUR DIOXIDE
SULFUR OXIDES
TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT