Independent confirmation of global land warming without the use of station temperatures
Abstract
Confidence in estimates of anthropogenic climate change is limited by known issues with air temperature observations from land stations. Station siting, instrument changes, changing observing practices, urban effects, land cover, land use variations, and statistical processing have all been hypothesized as affecting the trends presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others. Any artifacts in the observed decadal and centennial variations associated with these issues could have important consequences for scientific understanding and climate policy. We use a completely different approach to investigate global land warming over the 20th century. We have ignored all air temperature observations and instead inferred them from observations of barometric pressure, sea surface temperature, and sea-ice concentration using a physically based data assimilation system called the 20th Century Reanalysis. This independent data set reproduces both annual variations and centennial trends in the temperature data sets, demonstrating the robustness of previous conclusions regarding global warming.
- Authors:
-
- Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States). Cooperative Inst. for Research in Environmental Sciences; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Boulder, CO (United States). Earth System Research Lab.
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Boulder, CO (United States). Earth System Research Lab.
- Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter (United Kingdom)
- Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich (United Kingdom); King Abdulaziz Univ., Jeddah (Saudi Arabia)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF); Univ. of California, Oakland, CA (United States); UT-Battelle LLC/ORNL, Oak Ridge, TN (United States); UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1564929
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231; AC05-00OR22725; SC0005689
- Resource Type:
- Journal Article: Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 40; Journal Issue: 12; Journal ID: ISSN 0094-8276
- Publisher:
- American Geophysical Union
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; Geology
Citation Formats
Compo, Gilbert P., Sardeshmukh, Prashant D., Whitaker, Jeffrey S., Brohan, Philip, Jones, Philip D., and McColl, Chesley. Independent confirmation of global land warming without the use of station temperatures. United States: N. p., 2013.
Web. doi:10.1002/grl.50425.
Compo, Gilbert P., Sardeshmukh, Prashant D., Whitaker, Jeffrey S., Brohan, Philip, Jones, Philip D., & McColl, Chesley. Independent confirmation of global land warming without the use of station temperatures. United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/grl.50425
Compo, Gilbert P., Sardeshmukh, Prashant D., Whitaker, Jeffrey S., Brohan, Philip, Jones, Philip D., and McColl, Chesley. 2013.
"Independent confirmation of global land warming without the use of station temperatures". United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/grl.50425. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1564929.
@article{osti_1564929,
title = {Independent confirmation of global land warming without the use of station temperatures},
author = {Compo, Gilbert P. and Sardeshmukh, Prashant D. and Whitaker, Jeffrey S. and Brohan, Philip and Jones, Philip D. and McColl, Chesley},
abstractNote = {Confidence in estimates of anthropogenic climate change is limited by known issues with air temperature observations from land stations. Station siting, instrument changes, changing observing practices, urban effects, land cover, land use variations, and statistical processing have all been hypothesized as affecting the trends presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others. Any artifacts in the observed decadal and centennial variations associated with these issues could have important consequences for scientific understanding and climate policy. We use a completely different approach to investigate global land warming over the 20th century. We have ignored all air temperature observations and instead inferred them from observations of barometric pressure, sea surface temperature, and sea-ice concentration using a physically based data assimilation system called the 20th Century Reanalysis. This independent data set reproduces both annual variations and centennial trends in the temperature data sets, demonstrating the robustness of previous conclusions regarding global warming.},
doi = {10.1002/grl.50425},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1564929},
journal = {Geophysical Research Letters},
issn = {0094-8276},
number = 12,
volume = 40,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue Apr 02 00:00:00 EDT 2013},
month = {Tue Apr 02 00:00:00 EDT 2013}
}
Web of Science
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