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The subtle origins of surface-warming hiatuses

Abstract

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Earth’s surface warmed more slowly than climate models simulated1. This surface-warming hiatus is attributed by some studies to model errors in external forcing2,3,4, while others point to heat rearrangements in the ocean5,6,7,8,9,10 caused by internal variability, the timing of which cannot be predicted by the models1. However, observational analyses disagree about which ocean region is responsible11,12,13,14,15,16. Here we show that the hiatus could also have been caused by internal variability in the top-of-atmosphere energy imbalance. Energy budgeting for the ocean surface layer over a 100-member historical ensemble reveals that hiatuses are caused by energy-flux deviations as small as 0.08 W m−2, which can originate at the top of the atmosphere, in the ocean, or both. Budgeting with existing observations cannot constrain the origin of the recent hiatus, because the uncertainty in observations dwarfs the small flux deviations that could cause a hiatus. The sensitivity of these flux deviations to the observational dataset and to energy budget choices helps explain why previous studies conflict, and suggests that the origin of the recent hiatus may never be identified.

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Figure 1: Distribution of 15-year trends in global mean surface temperature (GMST) in the 100-member ensemble.
Figure 2: Surface energy budgets.
Figure 3: Hiatuses and their origins in models and observations.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science through the International Max Planck Research School on Earth System Modelling (IMPRS-ESM). J.J. acknowledges support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no 633211). We thank H. Haak for his technical assistance, H. Zuo and D. Peterson for providing the NEMO grid configuration, and B. Stevens and C. Li for their comments on the manuscript. We are indebted to L. Kornblueh for producing the large historical ensemble and to T. Schulthess and the Swiss National Computing Centre (CSCS) for providing the necessary computational resources. Thanks also to J. Kröger for producing the RCP4.5 extensions with the Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum (DKRZ) facilities.

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Contributions

C.H. and J.M. conceived the original idea for this study. C.H. developed the methodology and performed the analysis. All authors discussed the results. C.H. wrote the manuscript with input from J.M., T.M. and J.J.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher Hedemann.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Hedemann, C., Mauritsen, T., Jungclaus, J. et al. The subtle origins of surface-warming hiatuses. Nature Clim Change 7, 336–339 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3274

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