Widespread persistent changes to temperature extremes occurred earlier than predicted.

ABSTRACT: A critical question for climate mitigation and adaptation is to understand when and where the signal of changes to climate extremes have persistently emerged or will emerge from the background noise of climate variability. Here we show observational evidence that such persistent changes to temperature extremes have already occurred over large parts of the Earth. We further show that climate models forced with natural and anthropogenic historical forcings underestimate these changes. In particular, persistent changes have emerged in observations earlier and over a larger spatial extent than predicted by models. The delayed emergence in the models is linked to a combination of simulated change ('signal') that is weaker than observed, and simulated variability ('noise') that is greater than o

SUBMITTER: Li C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5772442 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature