Early onset of industrial-era warming across the oceans and continents
Abstract
The evolution of industrial-era warming across the continents and oceans provides a context for future climate change
and is important for determining climate sensitivity and the processes that control regional warming. Here we use postad
1500 palaeoclimate records to show that sustained industrial-era warming of the tropical oceans first developed during
the mid-nineteenth century and was nearly synchronous with Northern Hemisphere continental warming. The early
onset of sustained, significant warming in palaeoclimate records and model simulations suggests that greenhouse forcing
of industrial-era warming commenced as early as the mid-nineteenth century and included an enhanced equatorial
ocean response mechanism. The development of Southern Hemisphere warming is delayed in reconstructions, but this
apparent delay is not reproduced in climate simulations. Our findings imply that instrumental records are too short
to comprehensively assess anthropogenic climate change and that, in some regions, about 180 years of industrial-era
warming has already caused surface temperatures to emerge above pre-industrial values, even when taking natural
variability into account.
Domains
Environmental Sciences
Origin : Explicit agreement for this submission