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Helena Filipsson, foto Erik Thor

Helena Filipsson

Professor

Helena Filipsson, foto Erik Thor

Early onset of industrial-era warming across the oceans and continents

Author

  • Nerilie J. Abram
  • Helen V. McGregor
  • Jessica E. Tierney
  • Michael N. Evans
  • Nicholas P. McKay
  • Darrell S. Kaufman
  • Kaustubh Thirumalai
  • Belen Martrat
  • Hugues Goosse
  • Steven J. Phipps
  • Eric J. Steig
  • K. Halimeda Kilbourne
  • Casey P. Saenger
  • Jens Zinke
  • Guillaume Leduc
  • Jason A. Addison
  • P. Graham Mortyn
  • Marit Solveig Seidenkrantz
  • Marie Alexandrine Sicre
  • Kandasamy Selvaraj
  • Helena L. Filipsson
  • Raphael Neukom
  • Joelle Gergis
  • Mark A J Curran
  • Lucien Von Gunten

Summary, in English

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 post-ad 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.

Department/s

  • Quaternary Sciences
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate

Publishing year

2016-08-24

Language

English

Pages

411-418

Publication/Series

Nature

Volume

536

Issue

7617

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group

Topic

  • Climate Research

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0028-0836