Abstract
Abstract. As climate change has occurred over east Asia since the 1950s, intense interest and debate have arisen concerning the contribution of human activities to the observed warming in past decades. In this study, we investigate regional surface temperature change during the boreal cold season using a recently developed methodology that can successfully identify and separate the dynamically induced temperature (DIT) and radiatively forced temperature (RFT) changes in raw surface air temperature (SAT) data. For regional averages, DIT and RFT contribute 44 and 56 % to the SAT over east Asia, respectively. The DIT changes dominate the SAT decadal variability and are mainly determined by internal climate variability, represented by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). Radiatively forced SAT changes have made a major contribution to the global-scale warming trend and the regional-scale enhanced semi-arid warming (ESAW). Such enhanced warming is also found in radiatively forced daily maximum and minimum SAT. The long-term global-mean SAT warming trend is mainly related to radiative forcing produced by global well-mixed greenhouse gases. The regional anthropogenic radiative forcing, however, caused the enhanced warming in the semi-arid region, which may be closely associated with local human activities. Finally, the relationship between the so-called "global warming hiatus" and regional enhanced warming is discussed.
Highlights
Asia is arguably the most sensitive area to climate change, because it comprises almost 39 % of the world’s land area (White and Nackoney, 2003; Huang et al, 2013) and supports 4 billion people, which accounts for 66.67 % of the world population
The different evolutions of dynamically induced temperature (DIT) and radiatively forced temperature (RFT) indicate that the DIT and RFT played different roles in determining the raw temperature variability
Our results provide evidence that the enhanced warming in the drylands was induced by the RFT
Summary
Asia is arguably the most sensitive area to climate change, because it comprises almost 39 % of the world’s land area (White and Nackoney, 2003; Huang et al, 2013) and supports 4 billion people, which accounts for 66.67 % of the world population. The roles of different factors in the process of ESAW will be investigated using a recently developed methodology that can successfully identify and separate the dynamically induced temperature (DIT) and radiatively forced temperature (RFT) changes in the raw temperature data. It analyses the variability of DIT and the effects of major natural factors that dominate the dynamic temperature change, and shows the change of RFT.
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