How much has China warmed?

Date

2016-04

Authors

Zwiers, Francis W.

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Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)

Abstract

China's observing system records temperatures that are broadly influenced by urban warming Thus the warming of the Chinese land-mass is likely overestimated. Comparison between urban and rural stations appears to lead to an underestimate of the strength of the urbanization influence. A detection and attribution formalism allows decomposition of China's temperature record into externally forced, urbanization induced and internal variability induced components of change Results suggest about 1/3rd of the recorded warming is due to urbanization Anthropogenic and natural external forcing combined are estimated to have caused 0.93°C [0.61-1.24], consistent with the observed global land mean warming 1.09°C [0.86-1.31

Description

Keywords

UN SDG 13: Climate Action

Citation