Causes of differences in model and satellite tropospheric warming rates

Santer, B. D., Fyfe, J. C., Pallotta, G., Flato, G. M., Meehl, G. A., England, M. H., Hawkins, E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9477-3677, Mann, M. E., Painter, J. F., Bonfils, C., Cvijanovic, I., Mears, C., Wentz, F. J., Po-Chedley, S., Fu, Q. and Zou, C.-Z. (2017) Causes of differences in model and satellite tropospheric warming rates. Nature Geoscience, 10 (7). pp. 478-485. ISSN 1752-0894 doi: 10.1038/ngeo2973

Abstract/Summary

In the early twenty-first century, satellite-derived tropospheric warming trends were generally smaller than trends estimated from a large multi-model ensemble. Because observations and coupled model simulations do not have the same phasing of natural internal variability, such decadal differences in simulated and observed warming rates invariably occur. Here we analyse global-mean tropospheric temperatures from satellites and climate model simulations to examine whether warming rate differences over the satellite era can be explained by internal climate variability alone. We find that in the last two decades of the twentieth century, differences between modelled and observed tropospheric temperature trends are broadly consistent with internal variability. Over most of the early twenty-first century, however, model tropospheric warming is substantially larger than observed; warming rate differences are generally outside the range of trends arising from internal variability. The probability that multi-decadal internal variability fully explains the asymmetry between the late twentieth and early twenty-first century results is low (between zero and about 9%). It is also unlikely that this asymmetry is due to the combined effects of internal variability and a model error in climate sensitivity. We conclude that model overestimation of tropospheric warming in the early twenty-first century is partly due to systematic deficiencies in some of the post-2000 external forcings used in the model simulations.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/71264
Identification Number/DOI	10.1038/ngeo2973
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > NCAS Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	Nature Publishing Group
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