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.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Recently amplified arctic warming has contributed to a continual global warming trend

A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 22 February 2018

This article has been updated

Abstract

The existence and magnitude of the recently suggested global warming hiatus, or slowdown, have been strongly debated1,2,3. Although various physical processes4,5,6,7,8 have been examined to elucidate this phenomenon, the accuracy and completeness of observational data that comprise global average surface air temperature (SAT) datasets is a concern9,10. In particular, these datasets lack either complete geographic coverage or in situ observations over the Arctic, owing to the sparse observational network in this area9. As a consequence, the contribution of Arctic warming to global SAT changes may have been underestimated, leading to an uncertainty in the hiatus debate. Here, we constructed a new Arctic SAT dataset using the most recently updated global SATs2 and a drifting buoys based Arctic SAT dataset11 through employing the ‘data interpolating empirical orthogonal functions’ method12. Our estimate of global SAT rate of increase is around 0.112 °C per decade, instead of 0.05 °C per decade from IPCC AR51, for 1998–2012. Analysis of this dataset shows that the amplified Arctic warming over the past decade has significantly contributed to a continual global warming trend, rather than a hiatus or slowdown.

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

Access options

Buy this article

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

Fig. 1: Linear trends of annual mean Arctic SAT over 1998–2012.
Fig. 2: Annual mean SAT anomalies relative to 1979–2004 climatology and their linear trends over 1998–2012.
Fig. 3: Linear trends and associated uncertainties of the annual mean of global SAT based on the reconstructed Arctic SATs for eight periods of interest.

Similar content being viewed by others

Change history

  • 22 February 2018

    In the version of this Letter originally published, the increments on the y axis of Fig. 3 were incorrectly labelled as ‘0.0; 0.2; 0.2; 0.3’; they should have read ‘0.0; 0.1; 0.2; 0.3’. This has now been corrected in all versions of the Letter.

References

  1. IPCC Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2013).

  2. Karl, T. R. et al. Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus. Science 348, 1469–1472 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Fyfe, J. C. et al. Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 224–228 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. England, M. H. et al. Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus. Nat. Clim. Change 4, 222–227 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Chen, X. Y. & Tung, K.-K. Varying planetary heat sink led to global-warming slowdown and acceleration. Science 345, 897–903 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Solomon, S. et al. The persistently variable “background” stratospheric aerosol layer and global climate change. Science 333, 866–870 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Santer, B. D. et al. Observed multivariable signals of late 20th and early 21st century volcanic activity. Geophys. Res. Lett. 42, 500–509 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Meehl, G. A., Hu, A., Arblaster, J., Fasullo, J. & Trenberth, K. Externally forced and internally generated decadal climate variability associated with the interdecadal pacific oscillation. J. Clim. 26, 7298–7310 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Cowtan, K. & Way, R. G. Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 140, 1935–1944 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Dodd, E., Merchant, C. J., Rayner, N. A. & Morice, C. P. An investigation into the impact of using various techniques to estimate Arctic surface air temperature anomalies. J. Clim. 28, 1743–1763 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Rigor, I. G., Colony, R. L. & Martin, S. Variations in surface air temperature observations in the Arctic, 1979–97. J. Clim. 13, 896–914 (2000).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Beckers, J. M. & Rixen, M. EOF calculations and data filling from incomplete oceanographic datasets. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol. 20, 1839–1856 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Hansen, J., Ruedy, R., Sato, M. & Lo, K. Global surface temperature change. Rev. Geophys. 48, RG4004 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Rohde, R., et al. Berkeley Earth temperature averaging process. Geoinfor. Geostat. An Overview https://doi.org/10.4172/2327-4581.1000103 (2013).

  15. Felix, P. & Mauritsen, T. Arctic amplification dominated by temperature feedbacks in contemporary climate models. Nat. Geosci. 7, 181–184 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Vihma, T. et al. The atmospheric role in the Arctic water cycle: a review on processes, past and future changes, and their impacts. J. Geophys. Res. Biogeosci. 121, 586–620 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Mears, C. A., Schabel, M. C. & Wentz, F. J. A reanalysis of the MSU channel 2 tropospheric temperature record. J. Clim. 16, 3650–3664 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Thompson, D. & Wallace, J. M. The Arctic Oscillation signature in the wintertime geopotential height and temperature fields. Geophys. Res. Lett. 25, 1297–1300 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Inoue, J., Enomoto, T., Miyoshi, T. & Yamane, S. Impact of observations from Arctic drifting buoys on the reanalysis of surface fields. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L08501 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. North, G. R., Bell, T. L., Cahalan, R. F. & Moeng, F. J. Sampling errors in the estimation of empirical orthogonal functions. Mon. Weather Rev. 110, 699–706 (1982).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Dee, D. P. et al. The ERA-Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 137, 553–597 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Zhang, X. et al. Enhanced poleward moisture transport and the amplified northern high-latitude wetting trend. Nat. Clim. Change 3, 47–51 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Zhang, X., Sorteberg, A., Zhang, J., Gerdes, R. & Comiso, J. C. Recent radical shifts of atmospheric circulations and rapid changes in Arctic climate system. Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, L22701 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Morice, C. P., Kennedy, J. J., Rayner, N. A. & Jones, P. D. Quantifying uncertainties in global and regional temperature change using an ensemble of observational estimates: the HadCRUT4 data set. J. Geophys. Res. 117, D08101 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Jung, T. et al. Advancing polar prediction capabilities on daily to seasonal time scales. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. 97, 1631–1647 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Yamazaki, A., Inoue, J., Dethloff, K., Maturilli, M. & König-Langlo, G. Impact of radiosonde observations on forecasting summertime Arctic cyclone formation. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos. 120, 3249–3273 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Sato, K. et al. Improved forecasts of winter weather extremes over midlatitudes with extra Arctic observations. J. Geophys. Res. Oceans 122, 775–787 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Huang, B. Y. et al. Extended reconstructed sea surface temperature version 4 (ERSST.v4). Part I: upgrades and intercomparisons. J. Clim. 28, 911–930 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) for providing the updated global surface air temperature dataset; and the International Arctic Buoy Programme (IABP) and the NASA EOS program Polar Exchange at the Sea Surface (POLES) for making available the Arctic temperature dataset. Special thanks also go to L. Bian and X. Shao for their comments on this research. We also thank the ‘Explorer 100’ cluster system of Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology for computation support. This work was supported by the State Key Development Program for Basic Research of China (grant no. 2013CBA01805), by the National Science Foundation for Young Scientists of China (grant no. 41305054), the Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program (grant no. 20131089356) and by the China Meteorological Administration Special Public Welfare Research Fund (GYHY201306019) as well as the Tsinghua Global Scholars Fellowship Program. X.Z. was supported by the US NSF (grant numbers ARC-1023592 and ARC-1107509).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

J.H., X.Z. and Y.Luo designed the research and analysed research results. J.H., Q.Z. and M.H. collected data, verified the approach, and conducted computations. J.H. drafted and X.Z. revised the manuscript. Y.Lin also contributed to the revision of the manuscript. All other authors contributed to analysis of research results and improvement of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xiangdong Zhang or Yong Luo.

Additional information

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

A correction to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-017-0056-y.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1–6, Supplementary Figures 1–6, and Supplementary Tables 1–3

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Huang, J., Zhang, X., Zhang, Q. et al. Recently amplified arctic warming has contributed to a continual global warming trend. Nature Clim Change 7, 875–879 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-017-0009-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-017-0009-5

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing Anthropocene

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Anthropocene newsletter — what matters in anthropocene research, free to your inbox weekly.

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