Abstract
Global warming exhibits distinct differences at continental scales, yet whether models capture these differences is unclear. Here, we show that Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 climate models underestimate warming unevenness for China and the United States, possibly leading to a biased estimation of anthropogenic influence on warming over the two regions. Observational records suggest that the surface air temperature warming trends over China are 1.53 ± 0.10 and 1.38 ± 0.12 times those of the United States for 1900–2017 and 1951–2017, respectively. We find that surface air temperature changes over China seem more sensitive to external forcing owing to stronger long-range persistence, leading to substantially different warming trends between China and the United States. Our study provides insight into the drivers of contemporary climate warming that could help in devising climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies for the future.
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Data availability
All supporting data77 used to create figures are available through the Figshare repository at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19127261.v3. C-LSAT2.0 can be downloaded from the PANGAEA repository (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.919574)78 and from http://www.gwpu.net/h-col-103.html. Other benchmark global SAT datasets, such as CRUTEM5.0, GHCN, GISTEMP and BE, can be downloaded from KNMI’s Climate Explorer website (http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs2.cgi?id=someone@somewhere). C-LSAT HR can be accessed from the corresponding author upon request. The reconstruction data of the regional SAT changes at continental scales are from the PAGES 2k Programme and are available at the NOAA NCEI website (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/). The basemap data used to create figures were downloaded at http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
All codes77 used to set up model simulations, analyse data and/or create figures are available through the Figshare repository at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19127261.v3.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 41975105, to Q.L.) and the National Key R&D Programs of China (grant nos. 2018YFC1507705 and 2017YFC1502301, to Q.L.).
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Q.L. and W.D. designed the research; Q.L., B.S. and J.H. performed the analysis with input from C.L., L.C., W.S., Y.Y., B.J., Z.G., L.L., X.L., C.S. and W.L.; Q.L., B.H., W.D., P.J., Z.S. and C.L. drafted the manuscript, and all authors participated in editing the manuscript.
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Li, Q., Sheng, B., Huang, J. et al. Different climate response persistence causes warming trend unevenness at continental scales. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 343–349 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01313-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01313-9
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