Seasonal climate change patterns due to cumulative CO₂ emissions

Journal Article · Wed Jun 28 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Environmental Research Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa6eb0· OSTI ID:1393497

Partanen, Antti-Ilari ^[1]; Leduc, Martin ^[2]; Matthews, H. Damon ^[3]

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1. Concordia Univ., Montreal, QC (Canada); Finnish Meteorological Inst., Helsinki (Finland)
2. Ouranos, Montreal, QC (Canada)
3. Concordia Univ., Montreal, QC (Canada)

Cumulative CO₂ emissions are near linearly related to both global and regional changes in annual-mean surface temperature. These relationships are known as the transient climate response to cumulative CO₂ emissions (TCRE) and the regional TCRE (RTCRE), and have been shown to remain approximately constant over a wide range of cumulative emissions. Here, we assessed how well this relationship holds for seasonal patterns of temperature change, as well as for annual-mean and seasonal precipitation patterns. We analyzed an idealized scenario with CO₂ concentration growing at an annual rate of 1% using data from 12 Earth system models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Seasonal RTCRE values for temperature varied considerably, with the highest seasonal variation evident in the Arctic, where RTCRE was about 5.5 °C per Tt C for boreal winter and about 2.0 °C per Tt C for boreal summer. Also the precipitation response in the Arctic during boreal winter was stronger than during other seasons. We found that emission-normalized seasonal patterns of temperature change were relatively robust with respect to time, though they were sub-linear with respect to emissions particularly near the Arctic. Moreover, RTCRE patterns for precipitation could not be quantified robustly due to the large internal variability of precipitation. Here, our results suggest that cumulative CO₂ emissions are a useful metric to predict regional and seasonal changes in precipitation and temperature. This extension of the TCRE framework to seasonal and regional climate change is helpful for communicating the link between emissions and climate change to policy-makers and the general public, and is well-suited for impact studies that could make use of estimated regional-scale climate changes that are consistent with the carbon budgets associated with global temperature targets.

• Research Organization: Concordia Univ., Montreal, QC (Canada). Dept. of Geography, Planning and Environment; Finnish Meterological Inst., Helsinki (Finland); Ouranos, Montreal, QC (Canada)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• OSTI ID: 1393497
• Journal Information: Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 12, Issue 7; ISSN 1748-9326
• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
CMIP5
cumulative carbon emissions
seasonal climate change
pattern scaling
TCRE