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Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change

Nature volume 453, pages 353–357 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Significant changes in physical and biological systems are occurring on all continents and in most oceans, with a concentration of available data in Europe and North America. Most of these changes are in the direction expected with warming temperature. Here we show that these changes in natural systems since at least 1970 are occurring in regions of observed temperature increases, and that these temperature increases at continental scales cannot be explained by natural climate variations alone. Given the conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely to be due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, and furthermore that it is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent except Antarctica, we conclude that anthropogenic climate change is having a significant impact on physical and biological systems globally and in some continents.

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Figure 1: Data series of observed changes in physical and biological systems.
Figure 2: Location and consistency of observed changes with warming.
Figure 3: Distribution of cells with temperature changes and significant observed changes.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Palutikof, D. Rind and A. Watkinson for their feedback, and J. Mendoza for work on the graphics. The Goddard Institute for Space Studies authors acknowledge the support of the Earth Science Division, NASA Science Mission Directorate. D.K. is supported by the Australian Research Council as a Federation Fellow. Q.W. is supported by a Gary Comer Science and Education Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and by the National Science Foundation grant ATM-0555326. We acknowledge the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) and the WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) for their roles in making available the multi-model data set. Support of this data set is provided by the Office of Science, US Department of Energy.

Author Contributions C.R., D.K., G.C., A.M., T.L.R., B.S., P.N. and M.V. conceived the analytical framework; P.N., M.V., A.M. and N.E. constructed the database; M.V., D.K. and Q.W. performed the statistical analyses; G.C., A.M., T.L.R., P.T., B.S., C.L. and S.R. provided expertise in observed changes in physical and biological systems; and P.N., A.M., C.R. and A.I. analysed other driving forces.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia Center for Climate Systems Research, 2800 Broadway, New York, New York 10025, USA,

    Cynthia Rosenzweig, Marta Vicarelli & Peter Neofotis

  2. School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia

    David Karoly

  3. School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma, 100 East Boyd Street, Norman, Oklahoma 73019, USA,

    Qigang Wu

  4. Centro de Estudios Científicos, Avenida Arturo Prat 514, Casilla 1469, Valdivia, Chile,

    Gino Casassa

  5. Center of Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, Am Hochanger 13, 85 354 Freising, Germany,

    Annette Menzel & Nicole Estrella

  6. Stanford University, Center for Environmental Science and Policy, Stanford, California 94305, USA,

    Terry L. Root

  7. INRA Unité Agroclim, Site Agroparc, domaine Saint-Paul, F-84914 Avignon Cedex 9, France,

    Bernard Seguin

  8. Department of Behavioural Ecology, Institute of Environmental Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Umultowska 89, PL-61–614 Poznan, Poland,

    Piotr Tryjanowski

  9. China Water Information Center, Lane 2 Baiguang Road, Beijing 100761, China,

    Chunzhen Liu

  10. Caribbean Epidemiology Center, 16–18 Jamaica Boulevard, Federation ParkPO Box 164, Port of Spain, Trinadad and Tobago,

    Samuel Rawlins

  11. 3D-Environmental Change, Curtiuslaan 14, 1851 AM, Heiloo, Netherlands,

    Anton Imeson

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Correspondence to Cynthia Rosenzweig.

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Rosenzweig, C., Karoly, D., Vicarelli, M. et al. Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change. Nature 453, 353–357 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06937

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