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.
Katherine says:
May 5, 2014 at 1:56 am
The global climate has been experiencing significant warming at an unprecedented pace in the past century
I stopped reading there. GIGO.
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When I hear the word “unprecedented” I reach for my BS detector. Mind you, the word has been corrupted in recent years, so much so that our idiot Energy Secretary, Ed Davey, came up with this peach, I think about recent rainfall but am happy to be corrected, stating that
“It is unprecedented, and hasn’t happened for 30 years”.
So, yes, “unprecedented” really means “bullshit on the way”
I’m guessing one particular word in my last comment got it put into moderation… may as well Delete it.
Scientist #1: I measured something. Some places are getting warmer recently, and some are getting cooler! I think something is happening!
Scientist #2: Shouldn’t we gather more data to make sure?
Scientist #1: But, what if something bad happens before we are done??
Scientist #2: I don’t want to die. What shall we call it?
Scientist #1: …”Global Warming”?
Scientist #2: Nah, too specific.
Scientist #1: …”Climate Change”?
Scientist #1 and #2: Publish first!!
My understanding is that according to the basic physical principles of global warming theory, there will be more warming everywhere, although the warming will not necessarily be uniform, i.e., polar amplification. If regions of the plant were cooling over the long term, then that could only be attributable to ‘natural variability’ which is, I suppose, the catch-all phrase for ‘we don’t know why that might be.’
One more for the file… the file of things that everyone will laugh at in a few more years.
“Hey, remember when everyone thought the climate was all messed up?”
“Yeah, we were so naive back then.”
“Not all of us were fooled…”
“Denier!”
And they need to do a whole paper on this? C’mon, it getting warmer in the NH and cooler in the SH regularly every year and it even switches around. /sarc.
How bad are the models in predicting the earth’s energy budget? Commonly it is said that per doubling of CO2, sans feedbacks, the earth will warm .8 degrees. (I think I got that right) Does this mean the earth would accumulate enough energy to raise the average T .8 degrees?
If so, then are the already failed models worse than we thought? Certainly it takes less energy to raise the T of the arctic two degrees, then it does to raise the same area of the tropics two degrees. So, since most of the warming is near the arctic, and some mid latitude, and almost none in the tropics, are the already failed models, worse then we thought?
(Thoughts on this appreciated)
occurred in northern mid-latitudes…..
It’s a miracle…..
….they discovered UHI
This falls under the category of “Don’t tell us the merely obvious, just tell us the blatantly obvious!”.
I would have been shocked if they tried to say that warming was uniform. Even a blind man could see that whopper.
>>Surprise! Global warming is ‘spatially and temporally non-uniform’
No surprise at all. For instance, Tokyo has warmed by ca. 2 degC since the 1940s due to strong urbanization, but the temperature is completely flat at a rural (island) station which is only 180 km away from Tokyo.
Large image from the study on what the warming rates were in 1950 (a), 1960 (b), 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2009.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/images/nclimate2223-f2.jpg
I don’t know, was there really a warming trend from 1950 to 1980 across most of the planet?
Actually, not a surprise. HadCRUT3 data showed 30% of stations had a cooling trend throughout their histories. IIRC BEST showed the same proportion of CONUS stations also had cooling trends while the average anomaly was rising.
http://motls.blogspot.ca/2011/07/hadcrut3-30-of-stations-recorded.html
“Global warming was not as understood as we thought”, how can that be if the science is settled?
Peter Burmer says:
May 5, 2014 at 12:41 am
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Sarc? Commedy? Or lieing for the greater good? No matter which it may be, thanks for the entertainment!
1. It’s not warming globally. The warming that has occurred is regional and within natural variability. There is no statistically significant trend in the tropics, where the theory requires there be a trend.
2. There is no hot spot. The theory requires and the models predict the hot spot, but it’s definitively not there.
3. The models are conclusively invalidated by a vast panoply of failed predictions, especially of the hot spot and global average surface temperature. The list goes on.
Though dead as a matter of logic, the theory carries on as a secular religion in which empirical falsification simply does not matter, and as a pretext for the expansion of state power and the hobbling of industrial civilization and the West.
Modzi tabarnak… banda di amatore. Not you guys but these scientificators.
WUWT is reading a bit like The Onion this morning. What passes for ‘Global Warming News’ these days is not discernible from satire.
There is a scene in a comedy movie where there are several people dining with the king. One man at the table signals a steward to bring him more wine with a wave of his hand, but the steward does not move. The king notices and says to the man, “No, no! You have to do it like this!, and proceeds to wave his hand exactly the same way as the man. The steward immediately brings more wine to the table and fills the glasses. The man says “But, that is what I did!”, and the king responds with something like: “Yes, but you also have to be the king!”
In climate science, it doesn’t matter who is right or who is wrong. Something is noteworthy and true only if the ‘right’ person is saying it.
Since the beginning of global warming hysteria in the late 1980s, skeptics have been pointing out the obvious similarity between the modern warming and the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, and so on. Warmists responded by saying that those historical warm periods were only regional and not global. Skeptics countered with the fact that the modern warming is also ‘only regional’ and in the very same regions as the historical warm periods. This fact was ignored by the warmists in the same way that the steward ignored the hand wave by the non-king.
The evolution of climate science is apparently being written by the very funny folks at ‘The Onion’ and directed by Mel Brooks.
The hypothesis is that global warming is caused mainly by CO2+feedbacks and occurs primarily in the tropical troposphere, plus some in the Arctic. On that, the hypothesis is very clear – see AR4 Figure 9.1.
But now we have : “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.“.
That’s so far away from the hypothesis that it’s not funny. In fact, I think this paper should be put in front of all scientific bodies and all mainstream climate scientists with the demand that they acknowledge that it disproves their hypothesis.
Huh. That is exactly the way that the Medieval Warm Period occurred, according to global warming alarmists. No doubt they see this as conclusive proof that the Vikings drove too many SUVs.
We can see regional variation in this chart from the NSIDC on Antarctic sea ice extent in April.
This could be an iconic chart that should be spread around to alarmist websites.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_plot.png
the reality of manmade global warming!
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apparently you didn’t read the fine print:
“They also found that in some areas of the world, cooling had actually occurred.”
How can warming be global if some areas actually cooled? This study shows that what is going on is actually “Regional Warming”.
However, since honesty in science, at least climate science long went out the window, with inaccurate, unscientific labels being routinely used to by climate scientists label a dog a cat, up as down, cooling as warming, and “no change” as “hiatus”, there is nothing to be surprised about.
The global climate has been experiencing significant warming at an unprecedented pace in the past century
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good weasel words “in the past century”. Since there has been no warming “in this century”.
the reason must be the EPA. since the EPA outlawed carbon, global warming has stopped. now we have global pause, or global hiatus, or global climate un-change, or global un-warming.
never mind all the carbon produced by China. That is simply US jobs exported along with the carbon. The carbon blows back with the wind, while the jobs remain in China along with US prosperity. Surprising how all those pension plans that were raided during the financial crisis somehow never were noticed by the government, sworn to Protect the People.
It may be noted that the level of cosmic radiation increases much faster at the poles than at the lower latitudes.
http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/realtime/southpole.html
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/atmosphere/radbud/gs19_prd.gif
We are beginning to understand the climate better. This paper corroborates Judith Curry’s work on Stadium Waves. link
This paper along with Judith Curry’s work invalidates much Global Warming alarmism. Even if the planet does warm a bit, the warming will not be uniform and the alarmist tirade (IPCC chapters on impact) has it getting warmer everywhere.
None of this is new. The land/ocean distribution per latitude, the tilt of the Earth, and its spin, combined with oceanic/atmospheric circulation patterns would predict this and has likely been demonstrated with non-anthropogenic CO2 biased general circulation models that vary cloud and aerosol lenses. In fact we depend on this phenomenon to occur so that the Earth continues to perform as a heat engine, rapidly or more slowly circulating the heat imbalance which results in getting rid of the extra heat we always have to a greater or lesser extent. It’s great when the Earth does not get rid of all its extra heat. That’s when things are good and we can spend our evenings resting, playing, or partying. Our biggest concern is when the Earth cannot hold onto its absorbed heat and we start to cool. Call me when that begins to happen so that I can hit the alarm bell and adequately panic.