Evolution of land surface air temperature trend

Abstract

Global warming is non-uniform in time and space, but to understand potential impacts we need better understanding of its evolution. This work breaks down the warming trend and finds that it began in the subtropical and subpolar regions of the Northern Hemisphere, followed by the subtropical region of the Southern Hemisphere. The warming bands in the Northern Hemisphere expanded during the period 1950–1985 and merged to cover the entire hemisphere. The global climate has been experiencing significant warming at an unprecedented pace in the past century1,2. This warming is spatially and temporally non-uniform, and one needs to understand its evolution to better evaluate its potential societal and economic impact. Here, the evolution of global land surface air temperature trend in the past century is diagnosed using the spatial–temporally multidimensional ensemble empirical mode decomposition method3. We find that the noticeable warming (>0.5 K) started sporadically over the global land and accelerated until around 1980. Both the warming rate and spatial structure have changed little since. The fastest warming in recent decades (>0.4 K per decade) occurred in northern mid-latitudes. From a zonal average perspective, noticeable warming (>0.2 K since 1900) first took place in the subtropical and subpolar regions of the Northern Hemisphere, followed by subtropical warming in the Southern Hemisphere. The two bands of warming in the Northern Hemisphere expanded from 1950 to 1985 and merged to cover the entire Northern Hemisphere.

Cite this article

Ji, F., Wu, Z., Huang, J. et al. Evolution of land surface air temperature trend. Nature Clim Change 4, 462–466 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2223

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