Attribution of the July–August 2013 heat event in Central and Eastern China to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions

Ma, Shuangmei; Zhou, Tianjun; Stone, Dáithí A.; Angélil, Oliver; Shiogama, Hideo

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa69d2

Title: Attribution of the July–August 2013 heat event in Central and Eastern China to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions

Journal Article · Fri May 19 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Environmental Research Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa69d2· OSTI ID:1379852

Ma, Shuangmei ^[1]; Zhou, Tianjun ^[2]; Stone, Dáithí A. ^[3]; Angélil, Oliver ^[4]; Shiogama, Hideo ^[5]

Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing (China); Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China); Univ. of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China)
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China); Univ. of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China); Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Climate Change, Nanjing (China)
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Univ. of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW (Australia)
National Inst. for Environmental Studies, Ibaraki (Japan)

In the midsummer of 2013, Central and Eastern China (CEC) was hit by an extraordinary heat event, with the region experiencing the warmest July-August on record. To explore how human-induced greenhouse gas emissions and natural internal variability contributed to this heat event, we compare observed July-August mean surface air temperature wit h that simulated by climate models. We find that both atmospheric natural variability and anthropogenic factors contributed to this heat event. This extreme warm midsummer was associated with a positive high-pressure anomaly that was closely related to the stochastic behavior of atmospheric circulation. Diagnosis of CMIP5 models and large ensembles of two atmospheric models indicates that human influence has substantially increased the chance of warm mid-summers such as 2013 in CEC, although the exact estimated increase depends on the selection of climate models.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1379852

Journal Information:: Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 12, Issue 5; ISSN 1748-9326

Publisher:: IOP PublishingCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 54 works

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