A method for predicting the uncompleted  climate transition process

Yan, Pengcheng; Feng, Guolin; Hou, Wei; Yang, Ping

doi:10.5194/npg-27-489-2020

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…The severe risk of potential tipping points in regional and global climate under global warming has been emphasized in a number of recent studies [1][2][3][4] and a recent report, The Risks to Australia of a 3 • C Warmer World (2021), by the Australian Academy of Science [5]. The aforementioned studies detail important regime transitions of the Earth system, which, if they were to occur, would be catastrophic, leading to a markedly less habitable future global climate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the First Tipping Points of Southern Hemisphere Climate

O’Kane,

Frederiksen,

Frederiksen

et al. 2024

Climate

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Analysis of observations, reanalysis, and model simulations, including those using machine learning methods specifically designed for regime identification, has revealed changes in aspects of the Southern Hemisphere (SH) circulation and Australian climate and extremes over the last half-century that indicate transitions to new states. In particular, our analysis shows a dramatic shift in the metastability of the SH climate that occurred in the late 1970s, associated with a large-scale regime transition in the SH atmospheric circulation, with systematic changes in the subtropical jet, blocking, zonal winds, and storm tracks. Analysis via nonstationary clustering reveals a regime shift coincident with a sharp transition to warmer oceanic sea surface temperatures and increased baroclinicity in the large scales of the Antarctic Circumpolar Circulation (ACC), extending across the whole hemisphere. At the same time, the background state of the tropical Pacific thermocline shoaled, leading to an increased likelihood of El Niño events. The SH climate shift in the late 1970s is the first hemispheric regime shift that can be directly attributed to anthropogenic climate change. These changes in dynamics are associated with additional regional tipping points, including reductions in mean and extreme rainfall in south-west Western Australia (SWWA) and streamflow into Perth dams, and also with increases in mean and extreme rainfall over northern Australia since the late 1970s. The drying of south-eastern Australia (SEA) occurred against a background of accelerating increases in average and extreme temperatures across the whole continent since the 1990s, implying further inflection points may have occurred. Analysis of climate model simulations capturing the essence of these observed shifts indicates that these systematic changes will continue into the late 21st century under high greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Here, we review two decades of work, revealing for the first time that tipping points characteristic of regime transitions are inferred to have already occurred in the SH climate system.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the First Tipping Points of Southern Hemisphere Climate

O’Kane,

Frederiksen,

Frederiksen

et al. 2024

Climate

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The severe risk of potential tipping points in regional and global climate under global warming has been emphasized in a number of recent studies [1][2][3][4] and the recent report The Risks to Australia of a 3 • C Warmer World) (2021) by the Australian Academy of Science [5]. The aforementioned studies detail important regime transitions of the earth system that, if they were to occur, would be catastrophic leading to a markedly less habitable future global climate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the First Tipping Points of Southern Hemisphere Climate

O’Kane¹,

Frederiksen²,

Frederiksen³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Analysis of observations, reanalysis and model simulations, including via machine learning methods specifically designed for regime identification, have revealed changes in aspects of the Southern Hemisphere (SH) circulation and Australian climate and extremes over the last half century that point to transitions to new states. In particular, our analysis shows a dramatic shift in the metastability of the SH climate occurred in the late 1970s, associated with a large scale regime transition in the SH atmospheric circulation with systematic changes to the subtropical jet, blocking, zonal winds and storm tracks. Analysis via nonstationary clustering reveals a regime shift was coincident with a sharp transition to warmer oceanic sea surface temperatures and increased baroclinicity in the large scales of the Antarctic Circumpolar Circulation (ACC), extending across the whole hemisphere. At the same time, the background state of the tropical Pacific thermocline shoaled, leading to increased likelihood of El Ni\~{n}o events. These changes in the dynamics have preceded additional regional tipping points associated with reductions in mean and extreme rainfall in South-west Western Australia (SWWA) and streamflow into Perth dams, and also with increases in mean and extreme rainfall over Northern Australia since the late 1970s. The drying of South-eastern Australia (SEA) occurred against a background of accelerating increases in average and extreme temperatures across the whole continent since the 1990s, implying further inflection points may have occurred. Through climate model simulations capturing the essence of these observed shifts our analysis indicates these systematic changes will continue into the late 21st century under high greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Here we review two decades of work, revealing for the first time, that tipping points characteristic of first and second order regime transitions are inferred to have already occurred in the SH climate system.

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“…Further developments in the role of regime transitions and tipping points in various aspects of the climate system, including under global warming, have been considered by Franzke et al (2015); Freitas et al (2015); Jones and Ricketts (2017); Dijkstra (2019); Lenton (2019); Kypke et al (2020); Yan et al (2020); Fabiano et al (2021); and Australian Academy of Science (2021). It is clear from all the studies mentioned in this Introduction that there are dynamical and thermodynamical processes of the climate system that can result in regime transitions.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Regime transitions of Australian climate and climate extremes

Frederiksen

Osbrough

2021

Preprint

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Abstract. Systematic changes, since the beginning of the 20th century, in average and extreme Australian rainfall and temperatures indicate that Southern Australian climate has undergone regime transitions into a drier and warmer state. South-west Western Australia (SWWA) experienced the most dramatic drying trend with average streamflow into Perth dams, in the last decade, just 20 % of that before the 1960s and extreme, decile 10, rainfall reduced to near zero. In south-eastern Australia (SEA) systematic decreases in average and extreme cool season rainfall became evident in the late 1990s with a halving of the area experiencing average decile 10 rainfall in the early 21st century compared with that for the 20th century. The shift in annual surface temperatures over SWWA and SEA, and indeed for Australia as a whole, has occurred primarily over the last 20 years with the percentage area experiencing extreme maximum temperatures in decile 10 increasing to an average of more than 45 % since the start of the 21st century compared with less than 3 % for the 20th century mean. Average maximum temperatures have also increased by circa 1 °C for SWWA and SEA over the last 20 years. The climate changes are associated with atmospheric circulation shifts and are indicative of second order regime transitions, apart from extreme temperatures for which the dramatic increases are suggestive of first order transitions.

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A method for predicting the uncompleted climate transition process

Cited by 5 publications

References 33 publications

Beyond the First Tipping Points of Southern Hemisphere Climate

Beyond the First Tipping Points of Southern Hemisphere Climate

Beyond the First Tipping Points of Southern Hemisphere Climate

Regime transitions of Australian climate and climate extremes

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