global warming hiatus—a natural product of interactions of a secular warming trend and a multi-decadal oscillation

The globally-averaged annual combined land and ocean surface temperature (GST) anomaly change features a slowdown in the rate of global warming in the mid-twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. Here, it is shown that the hiatus in the rate of global warming typically occurs...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Theoretical and applied climatology 2016-01, Vol.123 (1-2), p.349-360
Main Authors: Yao, Shuai-Lei, Huang, Gang, Wu, Ren-Guang, Qu, Xia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air pollution
Anthropogenic factors
Aquatic Pollution
Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution
Atmospheric Sciences
Carbon dioxide
Climate change
Climate cycles
Climatology
Cooling
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Global warming
Goods and services tax
Greenhouse gases
Ocean temperature
Original Paper
Oscillators
Surface chemistry
Surface temperature
Temperature effects
Waste Water Technology
Water Management
Water Pollution Control
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Summary:The globally-averaged annual combined land and ocean surface temperature (GST) anomaly change features a slowdown in the rate of global warming in the mid-twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. Here, it is shown that the hiatus in the rate of global warming typically occurs when the internally generated cooling associated with the cool phase of the multi-decadal variability overcomes the secular warming from human-induced forcing. We provide compelling evidence that the global warming hiatus is a natural product of the interplays between a secular warming tendency due in a large part to the buildup of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, in particular CO₂ concentration, and internally generated cooling by a cool phase of a quasi-60-year oscillatory variability that is closely associated with the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation (AMO) and the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO). We further illuminate that the AMO can be considered as a useful indicator and the PDO can be implicated as a harbinger of variations in global annual average surface temperature on multi-decadal timescales. Our results suggest that the recent observed hiatus in the rate of global warming will very likely extend for several more years due to the cooling phase of the quasi-60-year oscillatory variability superimposed on the secular warming trend.
ISSN:0177-798X
1434-4483
DOI:10.1007/s00704-014-1358-x