Retrospective prediction of the global warming slowdown in the past decade

Guémas, Virginie; Doblas‐Reyes, F. J.; Andreu-Burillo, Isabel; Asif, Muhammad

doi:10.1038/nclimate1863

Cited by 182 publications

(140 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…This sentiment is reflected in statements that "Despite a sustained production of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, the Earth's mean near-surface temperature paused its rise during the 2000-2010 period" (Guemas et al 2013), and that "climate skeptics have seized on the temperature trends as evidence that global warming has ground to a halt" (Tollefson 2014). These scientific claims can be turned into a precise statistical null hypothesis: the slope in the regression line of global temperature on time is zero during the hiatus period.…”

Section: Hypothesis I: Hiatus In Temperature Trend During 1998-2013mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A basic assertion regarding the hiatus is that the steady increase in global surface temperature around a linear positive trend has stopped, or "paused" (Guemas et al 2013). This sentiment is reflected in statements that "Despite a sustained production of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, the Earth's mean near-surface temperature paused its rise during the 2000-2010 period" (Guemas et al 2013), and that "climate skeptics have seized on the temperature trends as evidence that global warming has ground to a halt" (Tollefson 2014).…”

Section: Hypothesis I: Hiatus In Temperature Trend During 1998-2013mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The international debate on the "hiatus" in the warming of the global climate system over the last 15 years has intensified (e.g., Meehl et al (2011), IPCC (2013), Otto et al (2013), Fyfe et al (2013), Kosaka and Xie (2013), Santer et al (2014), Trenberth and Fasullo (2013), Smith (2013), Guemas et al (2013), Chen and Tung (2014), Boykoff (2014), Hawkins et al (2014), England et al (2014), Karl et al (2015), Cowtan et al (2015)). The implications of the purported hiatus (also referred to as a "pause" or "slowdown") are far reaching.…”

Section: Introduction Motivation and Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The perceived hiatus has led to a myriad of resources being expended on trying to better understand the geophysical mechanisms that lead to a possible hiatus (including, among others, volcanic activity (Santer et al 2014), Pacific Ocean variability (Kosaka and Xie 2013;Trenberth and Fasullo 2013), and increased ocean heat uptake (Smith 2013;Guemas et al 2013;Chen and Tung 2014)), as well as spurious artifacts of the global climate observing system (Durack et al 2014;Cowtan and Way 2014;Karl et al 2015;Cowtan et al 2015). The purported hiatus has therefore inspired valuable scientific insight into the processes that regulate decadal-scale variations of the climate system.…”

Section: Introduction Motivation and Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Debunking the climate hiatus

et al. 2015

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The reported "hiatus" in the warming of the global climate system during this century has been the subject of intense scientific and public debate, with implications ranging from scientific understanding of the global climate sensitivity to the rate in which greenhouse gas emissions would need to be curbed in order to meet the United Nations global warming target. A number of scientific hypotheses have been put forward to explain the hiatus, including both physical climate processes and data artifacts. However, despite the intense focus on the hiatus in both the scientific and public arenas, rigorous statistical assessment of the uniqueness of the recent temperature time-series within the context of the long-term record has been limited. We apply a rigorous, comprehensive statistical analysis of global temperature data that goes beyond simple linear models to account for temporal dependence and selection effects. We use this framework to test whether the recent period has demonstrated i) a hiatus in the trend in global temperatures, ii) a temperature trend that is statistically distinct from trends prior to the hiatus period, iii) a "stalling" of the global mean temperature, and iv) a change in the distribution of the year-to-year temperature increases. We find compelling evidence that recent claims of a "hiatus" in global warming lack sound scientific basis. Our analysis reveals that there is no hiatus in the increase in the global mean temperature, no statistically significant difference in trends, no stalling of the global mean temperature, and no change in year-to-year temperature increases. Electronic supplementary material

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Section: Hypothesis I: Hiatus In Temperature Trend During 1998-2013mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Hypothesis I: Hiatus In Temperature Trend During 1998-2013mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction Motivation and Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction Motivation and Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Debunking the climate hiatus

et al. 2015

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“…The teams plugged in all of the observational data and ran decadal climate predictions at least every five years beginning in 1960, comparing the resulting hindcasts to the actual climate as well as standard climate models. In one such analysis 4 , Doblas-Reyes and his colleagues say that their model anticipated the slowdown in global warming up to five years in advance. Their paper also bolstered the theory that the deep oceans, notably the Atlantic and tropical Pacific, had stalled atmospheric warming by absorbing much of the heat being trapped by rising concentrations of greenhouse-gas concentrations in the air (see 'Lost heat').…”

Section: Why Has the Warming Slowed?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change: The forecast for 2018 is cloudy with record heat

Tollefson¹

2013

Nature

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Doug Smith took the biggest gamble of his career. After more than ten years of work with fellow modellers at the Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK, Smith published a detailed prediction of how the climate would change over the better part of a decade 1 . His team forecasted that global warming would stall briefly and then pick up speed, sending the planet into record-breaking territory within a few years.The Hadley prediction has not fared particularly well. Six years on, global temperatures have yet to shoot up as it projected. Despite this underwhelming result, such near-term forecasts have caught on among many climate modellers, who are now trying to predict how global conditions will evolve over the next several years and beyond. Eventually, they hope to offer forecasts that will enable humanity to prepare for the decade

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Improved forecast skill in the tropics in the new MiKlip decadal climate predictions

Pohlmann

Müller

Kulkarni

et al. 2013

Geophysical Research Letters

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[1] We introduce an improved initialization to the decadal predictions performed for the Mittelfristige Klimaprognosen (MiKlip) project based on the Max-Planck-Institute Earth System Model and furthermore test the effect of increased ocean and atmosphere model resolutions. The new initialization includes both a more sophisticated oceanic initialization and additionally an atmospheric initialization. We compare the performance of retrospective decadal forecasts over the past 50 years with that of the previous system. The new oceanic initialization considerably improves the performance in terms of surface air temperature over the tropical oceans on the 2-5 years time scale, which also helps to improve the predictive skill of global mean surface air temperature on this time scale. The higher model resolution improves the predictive skill of surface air temperature over the tropical Pacific even further. Through the newly introduced atmospheric initialization, the quasi-biennial oscillation exhibits predictive skill of up to 4 years when a sufficiently high vertical atmospheric resolution is used. Citation:

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Retrospective prediction of the global warming slowdown in the past decade

Cited by 182 publications

References 23 publications

Debunking the climate hiatus

Debunking the climate hiatus

Climate change: The forecast for 2018 is cloudy with record heat

Improved forecast skill in the tropics in the new MiKlip decadal climate predictions

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