Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Energy consumption and the unexplained winter warming over northern Asia and North America

Nature Climate Change volume 3, pages 466–470 (2013)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

The worldwide energy consumption in 2006 was close to 498 exajoules. This is equivalent to an energy convergence of 15.8 TW into the populated regions, where energy is consumed and dissipated into the atmosphere as heat. Although energy consumption is sparsely distributed over the vast Earth surface and is only about 0.3% of the total energy transport to the extratropics by atmospheric and oceanic circulations, this anthropogenic heating could disrupt the normal atmospheric circulation pattern and produce a far-reaching effect on surface air temperature. We identify the plausible climate impacts of energy consumption using a global climate model. The results show that the inclusion of energy use at 86 model grid points where it exceeds 0.4 W m−2 can lead to remote surface temperature changes by as much as 1 K in mid- and high latitudes in winter and autumn over North America and Eurasia. These regions correspond well to areas with large differences in surface temperature trends between observations and global warming simulations forced by all natural and anthropogenic forcings1. We conclude that energy consumption is probably a missing forcing for the additional winter warming trends in observations.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Locations and area-averaged energy consumption of the 86 model grid points used in the perturbation runs.
Figure 2: Differences of seasonal mean surface air temperature between perturbation and control runs.
Figure 3: Decadal land surface temperature trend differences between the HadCRUTv3 surface temperature observations and NCAR CCSM4 twentieth-century ensemble simulations.
Figure 4: Surface air temperature in DJF from the control run and differences in surface wind and temperature between the perturbation and control runs.

References

  1. Knutson, T. R. et al. Assessment of twentieth-century regional surface temperature trends using the GFDL CM2 coupled models. J. Clim. 19, 1624–1651 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Trenberth, K. E. et al. in IPCC Climate Change: The Physical Science Basis (eds Solomon, S. et al.) 235–336 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Ramanathan, V., Crutzen, P. J., Kiehl, J. T. & Rosenfeld, D. Aerosols, climate, and the hydrological cycle. Science 294, 2119–2124 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Feddema, J. J. et al. The importance of land-cover change in simulating future climates. Science 310, 1674–1678 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Rosenfeld, D. et al. Flood or drought: How do aerosols affect precipitation? Science 321, 1309–1313 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Ramanathan, V. et al. Warming trends in Asia amplified by brown cloud solar absorption. Nature 448, 575–578 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Ramanathan, V. & Carmichael, G. Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon. Nature Geosci. 1, 221–227 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Landsberg, H. E. The Urban Climate (Academic, 1981).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Oke, T. R. The energetic basis of the urban heat island. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 108, 1–24 (1982).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Bornstein, R. & Lin, Q. Urban heat islands and summertime convective thunderstorms in Atlanta: Three case studies. Atmos. Environ. 34, 507–516 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Shepherd, J. M., Pierce, H. & Negri, A. J. Rainfall modification by major urban areas: Observations from spaceborne rain radar on the TRMM satellite. J. Appl. Meteorol. 41, 689–701 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Washington, W. M. Numerical climate-change experiments: The effect of man’s production of thermal energy. J. Appl. Meteorol. 11, 769–772 (1972).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Washington, W. M. & Chervin, R. M. Regional climatic effects of large-scale thermal pollution simulation studies with the NCAR general circulation model. J. Appl. Meteorol. 18, 1501–1511 (1979).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Ichinose, T., Shimodozono, K. & Hanaki, K. Impact of anthropogenic heat on urban climate in Tokyo. Atmos. Environ. 33, 3897–3909 (1999).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Kusaka, H. & Kimura, F. Thermal effects of urban canyon structure on the nocturnal heat island: Numerical experiment using a mesoscale model coupled with an urban canopy model. J. Appl. Meteorol. 43, 1899–1910 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Oleson, K. W., Bonan, G. B., Feddema, J. & Jackson, T. An examination of urban heat island characteristics in a global climate model. Int. J. Climatol. 31, 1845–1865 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Trenberth, K. E. & Caron, J. M. Estimates of meridional atmosphere and ocean heat transports. J. Clim. 14, 3433–3443 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Budyko, M., Drosdov, I. O. A. & Yudin, M. I. Influence of economic activity on climate. Modern Problems of Climatology (Collection of Articles), FTD-HT-23-1338-67 (USAF, 1966).

  19. Sellers, W. D. Global climatic model based on the energy balance of the Earth-atmosphere system. J. Appl. Meteorol. 8, 392–400 (1969).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Block, A., Keuler, K. & Schaller, E. Impacts of anthropogenic heat on regional climate patterns. Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, L12211 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Collins, W. D. et al. The formulation and atmospheric simulation of the Community Atmosphere Model version 3 (CAM3). J. Clim. 19, 2144–2161 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. IPCC Climate Change 2007: The Scientific Basis (eds S. Solomon et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press (2007).

  23. Hansen, J., Sato, M. & Ruedy, R. Radiative forcing and climate response. J. Geophys. Res. 102, 6831–6864 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Ring, M. J. & Plumb, R. A. The response of a simplified GCM to axisymmetric forcings: Applicability of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. J. Atmos. Sci. 65, 3880–3898 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. International Energy Agency, World Energy Demand and Economic Outlook. International Energy Outlook 2009, 7–20 (2009).

  26. Gurney, K. et al. High resolution fossil fuel combustion CO2 emission fluxes for the United States. Environ. Sci. Technol. 43, 5535–5541 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  27. Rayner, P. J., Raupach, M. R., Paget, M., Peylin, P. & Koffi, E. A new global gridded data set of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion: Methodology and evaluation. J. Geophys. Res. 115, D19306 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was in part supported by the National Science Foundation (ATM-0833001 and ATM-0832915), the Office of Science (BER), the US Department of Energy Regional and Global Climate Modelling programme (DE-SC0004974) and Atmospheric System Research programme (DE-SC0000805), and the NOAA CPO/CPPA programme (NA10OAR4310168). Portions of this study were also supported by the DOE Cooperative Agreement No. DE-FC02-97ER62402, and the National Science Foundation. The NCAR is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA

    Guang J. Zhang

  2. Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306, USA

    Ming Cai

  3. Climate Change Research, CGD/NCAR, Boulder, Colorado 80307, USA

    Aixue Hu

Authors
  1. Guang J. Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ming Cai
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Aixue Hu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

M.C. conceived the study with G.J.Z. M.C. compiled the global energy consumption data. G.J.Z. performed the numerical simulations and analysed model output. Both G.J.Z. and M.C. interpreted the results and wrote the paper. A.H. analysed the surface temperature trend differences between observations and CCSM4 global warming simulations, and contributed to revising the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ming Cai.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information (PDF 2522 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Zhang, G., Cai, M. & Hu, A. Energy consumption and the unexplained winter warming over northern Asia and North America. Nature Clim Change 3, 466–470 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1803

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1803

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing