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Climate change

Patterns of tropical warming

The effect of rising greenhouse-gas emissions on climate is not uniform across the globe. An analysis of the mechanisms behind model-projected changes in ocean temperature gives greater confidence in the pattern of tropical warming and its potential impacts.

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Figure 1: Sea surface temperature change over the twenty-first century, averaged over 22 climate models for a mid-range emissions scenario (IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A1B (ref. 1); data are available from the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison).

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Correspondence to Amy C. Clement.

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Clement, A., Baker, A. & Leloup, J. Patterns of tropical warming. Nature Geosci 3, 8–9 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo728

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