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From local perception to global perspective

Nature Climate Change volume 5, pages 731–734 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Recent sociological studies show that over short time periods the large day-to-day, month-to-month or year-to-year variations in weather at a specific location can influence and potentially bias our perception of climate change, a more long-term and global phenomenon. By weighting local temperature anomalies with the number of people that experience them and considering longer time periods, we illustrate that the share of the world population exposed to warmer-than-normal temperatures has steadily increased during the past few decades. Therefore, warming is experienced by an increasing number of individuals, counter to what might be simply inferred from global mean temperature anomalies. This behaviour is well-captured by current climate models, offering an opportunity to increase confidence in future projections of climate change irrespective of the personal local perception of weather.

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Figure 1: An example of spatial heterogeneity of temperature anomalies based on GISS surface temperature anomalies9.
Figure 2: Time series of the fraction of population that experienced a 1σ, 2σ or 3σ exceedance with reference to 1951–1980.
Figure 3: Annual mean temperature anomaly and temperature exceedances.
Figure 4: Fraction of the world population that experiences a specific temperature σ exceedance as simulated by the CMIP5 models.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to K. Klein Goldewijk for providing the population data and thank C. C. Raible, A. Pendergrass, K. Trenberth, G. Turi, L. Terray and C. Deser for discussion and constructive comments. The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. F.L. is supported by an Early Postdoc Mobility fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. T.F.S. is grateful for funding by the Swiss National Science Foundation. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP, the US Department of Energy's Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, 80305, Colorado, USA

    Flavio Lehner

  2. Climate and Environmental Physics, University of Bern, Sidlerstrasse 5, Bern, 3012, Switzerland

    Thomas F. Stocker

  3. Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Falkenplatz 16, Bern, 3012, Switzerland

    Thomas F. Stocker

Authors
  1. Flavio Lehner
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  2. Thomas F. Stocker
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F.L. and T.F.S. designed the study and wrote the article. F.L. analysed the data.

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Correspondence to Flavio Lehner.

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Lehner, F., Stocker, T. From local perception to global perspective. Nature Clim Change 5, 731–734 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2660

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