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No pause in the increase of hot temperature extremes

Nature Climate Change volume 4, pages 161–163 (2014)Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 25 April 2014

This article has been updated

Observational data show a continued increase of hot extremes over land during the so-called global warming hiatus. This tendency is greater for the most extreme events and thus more relevant for impacts than changes in global mean temperature.

In the wake of the release of the Working Group I contribution to the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5)1, much attention in the media and scientific community has been devoted to the so-called hiatus2,3,4. This identified 'pause' in the increase of global mean temperature has been ascribed to various possible causes: for example, internal climate variability, a minimum in solar energy output, heat uptake in lower ocean layers, increased stratospheric water vapour, emission reductions of ozone-depleting substances and methane, data sampling and/or stronger shifts to La Niña states4,5,6,7,8,9,10.

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Figure 1: Time series of land area affected by exceedance of hot temperature extremes.
Figure 2: Time series of temperature anomalies for hot extremes over land (red) and global mean temperature (black, blue).

Change history

  • 25 March 2014

    In the Commentary ‘No pause in the increase of hot temperature extremes’ (Nature Climate Change 4, 161–163; 2014) references 12 and 18 were incorrect, and should have appeared as: 12. IPCC, 2012: Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (eds Field, C. B. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012). 18. Seneviratne, S. I. et al. in IPCC 2012: Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (eds Field C. B. et al.) 109–230 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012). These have now been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions after print 25 March 2014.

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Acknowledgements

This research was partly conducted during a sabbatical of S.I.S. at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (COECSS). S.I.S. and B.M. acknowledge partial funding from the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme, under grant agreement 282672, EMBRACE project. M.G.D. and L.V.A. acknowledge funding through the Australian Research Council grants CE110001028 and LP100200690.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, Zürich, 8057, Switzerland

    Sonia I. Seneviratne & Brigitte Mueller

  2. Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, NSW, Australia

    Markus G. Donat & Lisa V. Alexander

  3. ARC Centre of Excellence in Climate System Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, NSW, Australia

    Markus G. Donat & Lisa V. Alexander

  4. Climate Research Division, Environment Canada, Toronto, M3H 5T4, Canada

    Brigitte Mueller

Authors
  1. Sonia I. Seneviratne
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  2. Markus G. Donat
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  3. Brigitte Mueller
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  4. Lisa V. Alexander
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Contributions

S.I.S. designed the study with substantial inputs from all authors. M.G.D., B.M. and S.I.S. analysed the data. S.I.S. and L.V.A. wrote the article, with inputs from M.G.D. and B.M.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sonia I. Seneviratne.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information

Calculation of extreme warm day exceedances (ExD10, ExD30, ExD50) for ERA-Interim and HadEX2 datasets (PDF 1870 kb)

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Seneviratne, S., Donat, M., Mueller, B. et al. No pause in the increase of hot temperature extremes. Nature Clim Change 4, 161–163 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2145

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