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Role of volcanic and anthropogenic aerosols in the recent global surface warming slowdown

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 936–940 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

The rate of global mean surface temperature (GMST) warming has slowed this century despite the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases. Climate model experiments1,2,3,4 show that this slowdown was largely driven by a negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), with a smaller external contribution from solar variability, and volcanic and anthropogenic aerosols5,6. The prevailing view is that this negative PDO occurred through internal variability7,8,9,10,11. However, here we show that coupled models from the Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project robustly simulate a negative PDO in response to anthropogenic aerosols implying a potentially important role for external human influences. The recovery from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 also contributed to the slowdown in GMST trends. Our results suggest that a slowdown in GMST trends could have been predicted in advance, and that future reduction of anthropogenic aerosol emissions, particularly from China, would promote a positive PDO and increased GMST trends over the coming years. Furthermore, the overestimation of the magnitude of recent warming by models is substantially reduced by using detection and attribution analysis to rescale their response to external factors, especially cooling following volcanic eruptions. Improved understanding of external influences on climate is therefore crucial to constrain near-term climate predictions.

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Figure 1: Time series of 15-year trends (°C per decade) in global mean near-surface temperature.
Figure 2: Near-surface temperature trends for the 15-year period 1998 to 2012.
Figure 3: Anthropogenic aerosol impacts on atmospheric circulation trends for the 15-year period 1998 to 2012.
Figure 4: Influence of sulfate aerosols on the Aleutian Low.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Joint DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101), and the EU FP7 SPECS project. 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 outputs.

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Affiliations

  1. Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK

    Doug M. Smith, Ben B. B. Booth, Nick J. Dunstone, Rosie Eade, Leon Hermanson, Gareth S. Jones, Adam A. Scaife, Katy L. Sheen & Vikki Thompson

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  1. Doug M. Smith
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Contributions

D.M.S. led the analysis and writing, with suggestions and comments from all authors. G.S.J. guided the detection and attribution analysis.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Doug M. Smith.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Smith, D., Booth, B., Dunstone, N. et al. Role of volcanic and anthropogenic aerosols in the recent global surface warming slowdown. Nature Clim Change 6, 936–940 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3058

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