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Recent observed and simulated warming

Nature Climate Change volume 4, pages 150–151 (2014)Cite this article

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To the Editor —

Fyfe et al.1 showed that global warming over the past 20 years is significantly less than that calculated from 117 simulations of the climate by 37 models participating in Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). This might be due to some combination of errors in external forcing, model response and simulated internal variability1. Meanwhile, Kosaka and Xie2 used an earlier-generation climate model to show that such a difference is substantially reduced if eastern tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures are prescribed to follow the observed rather than the simulated evolution. Kosaka and Xie2 concluded, therefore, that “accounting for recent cooling in the eastern tropical Pacific reconciles climate simulations and observations”. It is in this light that we revisit the findings of Fyfe and colleagues1.

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Figure 1: Trends in global mean surface temperature and eastern tropical Pacific sea surface temperature for 1993–2012.
Figure 2: Trends in global surface temperature for 1993–2012.

References

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Acknowledgements

We thank Greg Flato and Bill Merryfield for comments on an earlier draft. We acknowledge the modelling groups, the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison and the WCRP's Working Group on Coupled Modelling for their roles in making available the WCRP CMIP multi-model datasets. Support for this dataset is provided by the Office of Science, US Department of Energy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    John C. Fyfe & Nathan P. Gillett

Authors
  1. John C. Fyfe
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  2. Nathan P. Gillett
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Contributions

J.C.F. carried out most of the analysis and wrote the initial draft. N.P.G. helped with the analysis and edited the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to John C. Fyfe.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Fyfe, J., Gillett, N. Recent observed and simulated warming. Nature Clim Change 4, 150–151 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2111

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