Unambiguous warming in the western tropical Pacific primarily caused by anthropogenic forcing
Article
Article Title | Unambiguous warming in the western tropical Pacific primarily caused by anthropogenic forcing |
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ERA Journal ID | 1969 |
Article Category | Article |
Authors | Wang, Guomin (Author), Power, Scott B. (Author) and McGree, Simon (Author) |
Journal Title | International Journal of Climatology |
Journal Citation | 36 (2), pp. 933-944 |
Number of Pages | 12 |
Year | 2015 |
Publisher | John Wiley & Sons |
Place of Publication | United Kingdom |
ISSN | 0899-8418 |
1097-0088 | |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.4395 |
Web Address (URL) | https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/joc.4395 |
Abstract | Small Island Developing States in the tropical western Pacific are among the most vulnerable to climate change. While a great deal of information on the observed climate change trends and their cause is available for many other regions and for the globe as a whole, much less information has been available specifically for the Pacific. Here, we show that warming over the past 50years in the western Pacific is evident in recently homogenized tropical station data, and in gridded surface temperature data sets for the region. The warming has already emerged from the background climate variability. The observational data and Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 climate model output are used to show that the observed warming was primarily caused by human-forced changes to the earth's radiative balance. Further warming is projected to occur in the same models under all three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) considered (RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), with the magnitude far exceeding the warming to date under the two scenarios with higher emissions (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). |
Keywords | Climate change; CMIP5; Coupled Model Intercomparison Project; Earth's radiative balance; Pacific islands; Small island developing state; Surface temperatures; Tropical Western Pacific; Warming; CMIP5; Pacific Islands; Surface temperature; Warming; |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 370201. Climate change processes |
Byline Affiliations | Australian Bureau of Meteorology |
Institution of Origin | University of Southern Queensland |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/q66xz/unambiguous-warming-in-the-western-tropical-pacific-primarily-caused-by-anthropogenic-forcing
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