New study sheds light on global warming trends
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — New research by a team of Florida State University scientists shows the first detailed look at global land surface warming trends over the last 100 years, illustrating precisely when and where different areas of the world started to warm up or cool down.
The research indicates that the world is indeed getting warmer, but historical records show that it hasn’t happened everywhere at the same rate.
And that new information even took scientists by surprise.
“Global warming was not as understood as we thought,” said Zhaohua Wu, an assistant professor of meteorology at FSU.
Wu led a team of climate researchers including Fei Ji, a visiting doctoral student at FSU’s Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS); Eric Chassignet, director of COAPS; and Jianping Huang, dean of the College of Atmospheric Sciences at Lanzhou University in China. The group, using an analysis method newly developed by Wu and his colleagues, examined land surface temperature trends from 1900 onward for the entire globe, minus Antarctica.
Previous work by scientists on global warming could not provide information of non-uniform warming in space and time due to limitations of previous analysis methods in climate research.
The research team found that noticeable warming first started around the regions circling the Arctic and subtropical regions in both hemispheres. But the largest accumulated warming to date is actually at the northern midlatitudes. They also found that in some areas of the world, cooling had actually occurred.
“The global warming is not uniform,” Chassignet said. “You have areas that have cooled and areas that have warmed.”
For example, from about 1910 to 1980, while the rest of the world was warming up, some areas south of the equator — near the Andes — were actually cooling down, and then had no change at all until the mid 1990s. Other areas near and south of the equator didn’t see significant changes comparable to the rest of the world at all.
The team’s work is featured in the May 4 edition of the journal Nature Climate Change.
The detailed picture of when and where the world has warmed or cooled will provide a greater context to global warming research overall, Wu said.
The paper: Fei Ji, Zhaohua Wu, Jianping Huang, Eric P. Chassignet. Evolution of land surface air temperature trend. Nature Climate Change, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2223
Evolution of land surface air temperature trend
Fei Ji, Zhaohua Wu, Jianping Huang & Eric P. Chassignet
Abstract:
The global climate has been experiencing significant warming at an unprecedented pace in the past century1, 2. This warming is spatially and temporally non-uniform, and one needs to understand its evolution to better evaluate its potential societal and economic impact. Here, the evolution of global land surface air temperature trend in the past century is diagnosed using the spatial–temporally multidimensional ensemble empirical mode decomposition method3. We find that the noticeable warming (>0.5 K) started sporadically over the global land and accelerated until around 1980. Both the warming rate and spatial structure have changed little since. The fastest warming in recent decades (>0.4 K per decade) occurred in northern mid-latitudes. From a zonal average perspective, noticeable warming (>0.2 K since 1900) first took place in the subtropical and subpolar regions of the Northern Hemisphere, followed by subtropical warming in the Southern Hemisphere. The two bands of warming in the Northern Hemisphere expanded from 1950 to 1985 and merged to cover the entire Northern Hemisphere.
This must be very unsettling for them…
This is much as I would expect.
Anything other than an increase total energy from the sun that affects surface temperatures will change temperature differentials in the horizontal plane unevenly which creates greater density differentials from place to place across the surface for a given distance.
That changes the rate of convective overturning which is the primary thermostatic mechanism within a gaseous atmosphere.
The findings confirm my long expressed view that the negative system response to internal system forcing elements is a shift in the surface energy distribution and the rate of convective overturning rather than a significant change in average surface temperature.
When the shifts are accompanied by a change in average surface temperature as referred to in this post then that can only be as a result of a change in insolation reaching the surface which involves cloudiness and albedo changes.
During the period of warming discussed there was a reduction in average global cloud cover as was pointed out in an earlier thread on this site.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/10/17/earths-albedo-tells-a-interesting-story/
I’m glad to see that WUWT it’s changing its editorial policy to include the publications in Nature, almost all of which it has previously ignored. Usually WUWT would also not mention anything that concludes “The global climate has been experiencing significant warming at an unprecedented pace in the past century”. Notice also how the paprler shows how there has been very fast warming in northern mid-latitudes in the past couple of decades.
I congratulate the WUWT team for a more balanced selection of posts that takes seriously the reality of manmade global warming!
Peter – I think you forgot the /sarc tag for that last paragraph?
Peter Burmer says:
May 5, 2014 at 12:41 am
Where
have
you
been?
This paper is of no surprise at all.
Over three years ago WUWT carried a piece written by Verity Jones and myself that observed that there was cooling as well as warming going on
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/04/in-search-of-cooling-trends/
As Mosh will no doubt be along shortly I would again suggest to him that this is a subject worthy of BEST. How much of the world is cooling, how much is warming and what are the timescales?
tonyb
The Warmists spin off tangents that just amaze me !
First, to petey burmer~ Weren’t you that guy who climbed out of the bomb shelter, after spending your entire life underground?
Question to everyone else: haven’t (at least some) alarmists insisted that the above was always the case? I know back where I post my articles, one parrot, errrr shill, errr Tru Believer, insists that ‘warming in some regions, cooling in others’ has always been the claim. Now, we’re finding out they are only just finding this out?
Peter Burmer says:
May 5, 2014 at 12:41 am
——————————–
Actually it should have been posted under “comedy”.
They managed to use “unprecedented” in the very first line of the abstract. I think there’s a prize for that…
That “unprecedented” is of course garbage. Warming of similar amounts and rate have been observed pre 1950 before any significant human use of fossil and non-fossil hydrocarbon fuels.
So what if there has been on and off warming since the little ice age? It has nothing to do with radiative gases.
Oh and the Nature publication? They blew their credibility on climate long ago. They used the term of vilification “deniers” in editorials. Until they sack all editors involved in vilification of sceptics there will be no respect.
…but only five years to save planet Zog.
Peter Burmer:
Thankyou for the laughs-out-loud you gave me with your satirical post at May 5, 2014 at 12:41 am.
Each statement in your post is illogical and/or untrue but is typical of the nonsense spouted by AGW ‘true believers’. Truly, your post is superb satire!
My favourite of the silly statements in your post is
The “balance” of WUWT has always been to assess the “reality of manmade global warming”. And there is no evidence that there is any such “reality”. Indeed, as the discussed paper reports there has not been global warming: there has only been local cooling and local warming.
Richard
So we have global warming in the NH, some global cooling in the SH, no increase in the warming trend since about 1980, More CO2 in the atmosphere since 1980 – and it’s definitely CO2’s fault.
Right; I think I’ve got it.
Sorry the abstract doesn’t mention CO2. Is there change in the air?
This article proves beyond doubt that there is no enhanced GHE from CO2: if there was, the warming would be uniform.
That negative feedback in the atmosphere reduces CO2-AGW below the ‘no-feedback’ 1.2 K climate sensitivity is proved by no statistically-significant atmospheric warming for nearly 18 years. However, it’ll take some time for the indoctrination of the public by fake IPCC physics to be undone.
By that time, we’ll be well into the new Little Ice Age.
inter glacial warming period means earth warms shock.
The language and content of the unqualified posting of the abstract on this wantonly warmist “research” rather confirms my increasing belief that all those submerged Watts are beginning to surface where least expected – byesee!
“Notice also how the paper shows how there has been very fast warming in northern mid-latitudes in the past couple of decades.”
Where most of the developed world lives eh? You know, the ones that build cities around themometers, and have all those ‘heat islands’
Wha-da-yah-mean, Global warmings not global?
The global climate has been experiencing significant warming at an unprecedented pace in the past century
I stopped reading there. GIGO.
It leaves one big question. Actually two.
Does the local warming correlate with urbanisation or intensification of agriculture ?
I’m pretty sure that GW isn’t the same everywhere all the time, but I’m a bit surprised to find out it is spatially and temporally non-uniform.
And maybe some day in the future the modelers will try to simulate the coupled ocean-atmosphere processes that cause the surfaces of the oceans to warm and cool in specific patterns in space and time, which impact where the land surface air temperatures warm and cool in specific patterns in space and time. Until the modelers are capable of creating those basics coupled ocean-atmosphere processes, the models have no relationship to the real world and serve no purpose in attribution studies or in projections of future climate.
So this means that there is no global warming, just varying temperature trends at varying locations around the globe. Now exactly where will the catastrophic bit happen? More money from the gravy train needed so that we can determine exactly who’s children’s children’s children will be in danger. And of course once that has all been modeled there will be mass migration to the protected areas- the dreaded climate change refugees.
@ur momisugly Spartacusisfree
…This article proves beyond doubt that there is no enhanced GHE from CO2: if there was, the warming would be uniform…
OMG! We have UNEVEN WARMING! What do you think could be causing this dangerous phenomenon?
Why, of course – it must be the demon CO2! Everywhere we go, we find CO2 responsible for some problem. Another reason to pay more taxes to the IPCC…
So. Have I got this right. Some parts of the globe sometimes get warmer. Some parts of the globe sometimes get cooler.
And scientists are needed to tell us this?