Well-estimated global surface warming in climate projections selected for ENSO phase

The question of how climate model projections have tracked the actual evolution of global mean surface air temperature is important in establishing the credibility of their projections. Some studies and the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report suggest that the recent 15-year period (1998–2012) provides evid...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature climate change 2014-09, Vol.4 (9), p.835-840
Main Authors: Risbey, James S., Lewandowsky, Stephan, Langlais, Clothilde, Monselesan, Didier P., O’Kane, Terence J., Oreskes, Naomi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
704/106/694/1108
704/106/694/2786
Air temperature
Climate Change
Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts
Climate models
Climatology. Bioclimatology. Climate change
Earth, ocean, space
El Nino
Environment
Environmental Law/Policy/Ecojustice
Exact sciences and technology
External geophysics
Geophysics. Techniques, methods, instrumentation and models
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Marine
Meteorology
Southern Oscillation
Surface temperature
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Summary:The question of how climate model projections have tracked the actual evolution of global mean surface air temperature is important in establishing the credibility of their projections. Some studies and the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report suggest that the recent 15-year period (1998–2012) provides evidence that models are overestimating current temperature evolution. Such comparisons are not evidence against model trends because they represent only one realization where the decadal natural variability component of the model climate is generally not in phase with observations. We present a more appropriate test of models where only those models with natural variability (represented by El Niño/Southern Oscillation) largely in phase with observations are selected from multi-model ensembles for comparison with observations. These tests show that climate models have provided good estimates of 15-year trends, including for recent periods and for Pacific spatial trend patterns. The current slowdown in global warming has raised questions about the accuracy of climate model projections. This work selects models that are largely in phase with the natural variability, in this case the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, of the climate system. The selected models are able to predict the recent Pacific Ocean temperature and spatial trends.
ISSN:1758-678X
1758-6798
DOI:10.1038/nclimate2310