Letter abstract
Nature Geoscience 1, 750 - 754 (2008)
Published online: 30 October 2008 | doi:10.1038/ngeo338
Subject Category: Climate science
Attribution of polar warming to human influence
Nathan P. Gillett1, Dáithí A. Stone2,3, Peter A. Stott4, Toru Nozawa5, Alexey Yu. Karpechko1, Gabriele C. Hegerl6, Michael F. Wehner7 & Philip D. Jones1
The polar regions have long been expected to warm strongly as a result of anthropogenic climate change, because of the positive feedbacks associated with melting ice and snow1, 2. Several studies have noted a rise in Arctic temperatures over recent decades2, 3, 4, but have not formally attributed the changes to human influence, owing to sparse observations and large natural variability5, 6. Both warming and cooling trends have been observed in Antarctica7, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report concludes is the only continent where anthropogenic temperature changes have not been detected so far, possibly as a result of insufficient observational coverage8. Here we use an up-to-date gridded data set of land surface temperatures9, 10 and simulations from four coupled climate models to assess the causes of the observed polar temperature changes. We find that the observed changes in Arctic and Antarctic temperatures are not consistent with internal climate variability or natural climate drivers alone, and are directly attributable to human influence. Our results demonstrate that human activities have already caused significant warming in both polar regions, with likely impacts on polar biology, indigenous communities2, ice-sheet mass balance and global sea level11.
- Climatic Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
- Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Clarendon Laboratory, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, UK
- Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK
- Met Office Hadley Centre, Fitzroy Road, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK
- National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8506, Japan
- School of Geosciences, The University of Edinburgh, Grant Institute, The King's Building, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JW, UK
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
Correspondence to: Nathan P. Gillett1 e-mail: n.gillett@uea.ac.uk
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