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Title: 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:
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [1]
  1. 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.
  2. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Boulder, CO (United States). Earth System Research Lab.
  3. Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter (United Kingdom)
  4. 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}
}

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Cited by: 37 works
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Works referenced in this record:

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Works referencing / citing this record:

Estimating low-frequency variability and trends in atmospheric temperature using ERA-Interim: Atmospheric Temperature Variability and Trends using ERA-Interim
journal, January 2014


ERA-20CM: a twentieth-century atmospheric model ensemble: The ERA-20CM Ensemble
journal, March 2015

  • Hersbach, Hans; Peubey, Carole; Simmons, Adrian
  • Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 141, Issue 691
  • https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.2528

Towards a more reliable historical reanalysis: Improvements for version 3 of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis system
journal, August 2019

  • Slivinski, Laura C.; Compo, Gilbert P.; Whitaker, Jeffrey S.
  • Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 145, Issue 724
  • https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.3598

Temperature trends in Europe: comparison of different data sources
journal, December 2019


Influence of high-latitude warming and land-use changes in the early 20th century northern Eurasian CO 2 sink
journal, June 2018


On the Suitability of Current Atmospheric Reanalyses for Regional Warming Studies over China
posted_content, December 2017


Evaluation of Greenland near surface air temperature datasets
journal, January 2017


On the suitability of current atmospheric reanalyses for regional warming studies over China
journal, January 2018


Towards a more reliable historical reanalysis: Improvements for version 3 of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis system
text, January 2019