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Unambiguous warming in the western tropical Pacific primarily caused by anthropogenic forcing
Author(s) -
Wang Guomin,
Power Scott B.,
McGree Simon
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
international journal of climatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.58
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-0088
pISSN - 0899-8418
DOI - 10.1002/joc.4395
Subject(s) - coupled model intercomparison project , climatology , environmental science , representative concentration pathways , radiative forcing , global warming , forcing (mathematics) , climate model , climate change , tropics , oceanography , geology , ecology , biology
Small Island Developing States in the tropical western Pacific are among the most vulnerable to climate change. While a great deal of information on the observed climate change trends and their cause is available for many other regions and for the globe as a whole, much less information has been available specifically for the Pacific. Here, we show that warming over the past 50 years in the western Pacific is evident in recently homogenized tropical station data, and in gridded surface temperature data sets for the region. The warming has already emerged from the background climate variability. The observational data and Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 climate model output are used to show that the observed warming was primarily caused by human‐forced changes to the earth's radiative balance. Further warming is projected to occur in the same models under all three Representative Concentration Pathways ( RCPs ) considered ( RCP2.6 , RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 ), with the magnitude far exceeding the warming to date under the two scenarios with higher emissions ( RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 ).