Open AccessAttributing Changing Rates of Temperature Record Breaking to Anthropogenic Influences
Author(s) -
King Andrew D.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
earth's future
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.641
H-Index - 39
ISSN - 2328-4277
DOI - 10.1002/2017ef000611
Subject(s) - climate change , temperature record , climatology , environmental science , climate system , anomaly (physics) , geologic record , representative concentration pathways , atmospheric sciences , climate model , geology , oceanography , physics , paleontology , condensed matter physics
Record‐breaking temperatures attract attention from the media, so understanding how and why the rate of record breaking is changing may be useful in communicating the effects of climate change. A simple methodology designed for estimating the anthropogenic influence on rates of record breaking in a given time series is proposed here. The frequency of hot and cold record‐breaking temperature occurrences is shown to be changing due to the anthropogenic influence on the climate. Using ensembles of model simulations with and without human‐induced forcings, it is demonstrated that the effect of climate change on global record‐breaking temperatures can be detected as far back as the 1930s. On local scales, a climate change signal is detected more recently at most locations. The anthropogenic influence on the increased occurrence of hot record‐breaking temperatures is clearer than it is for the decreased occurrence of cold records. The approach proposed here could be applied in rapid attribution studies of record extremes to quantify the influence of climate change on the rate of record breaking in addition to the climate anomaly being studied. This application is demonstrated for the global temperature record of 2016 and the Central England temperature record in 2014.