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Simulation of recent northern winter climate trends by greenhouse-gas forcing

Nature volume 399, pages 452–455 (1999)Cite this article

Abstract

The temperature of air at the Earth's surface has risen during the past century1, but the fraction of the warming that can be attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gases remains controversial. The strongest warming trends have been over Northern Hemisphere land masses during winter, and are closely related to changes in atmospheric circulation. These circulation changes are manifested by a gradual reduction in high-latitude sea-level pressure, and an increase in mid-latitude sea-level pressure associated with one phase of the Arctic Oscillation (a hemisphere-scale version of the North Atlantic Oscillation)2. Here we use several different climate-model versions to demonstrate that the observed sea-level-pressure trends, including their magnitude, can be simulated by realistic increases in greenhouse-gas concentrations. Thus, although the warming appears through a naturally occurring mode of atmospheric variability, it may be anthropogenically induced and may continue to rise. The Arctic Oscillation trend is captured only in climate models that include a realistic representation of the stratosphere, while changes in ozone concentrations are not necessary to simulate the observed climate trends. The proper representation of stratospheric dynamics appears to be important to the attribution of climate change, at least on a broad regional scale.

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Figure 1: Global annual-average surface temperature anomalies (°C).
Figure 2: Northern Hemisphere wintertime climate trends.
Figure 3: Surface air temperature (SAT) and the Arctic Oscillation (AO).

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Hansen, D. Rind and G. Russell for making available their numerical experiments, D. Thompson for providing analyses of the observations and P. Lonergan for assistance with model output. We also thank P. Stone and J. M. Wallace for their comments on earlier drafts of this Letter. G.A.S. was supported by a NOAA postdoctoral fellowship in Climate and Global Change administered by the UCAR Visiting Scientist Program. R.L.M. is supported by the NOAA Atlantic Climate Change Program. Stratospheric modeling at GISS is supported by the NASA Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling and Analysis Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, 10025, New York, USA

    Drew T. Shindell & Gavin A. Schmidt

  2. Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, 10025, New York, USA

    Drew T. Shindell, Ron L. Miller & Gavin A. Schmidt

  3. Department of Applied Physics, Columbia University, New York, 10027, New York, USA

    Ron L. Miller

  4. Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, V6T 1Z4, BC, Canada

    Lionel Pandolfo

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  1. Drew T. Shindell
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Correspondence to Drew T. Shindell.

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Shindell, D., Miller, R., Schmidt, G. et al. Simulation of recent northern winter climate trends by greenhouse-gas forcing. Nature 399, 452–455 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/20905

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