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Contributions of natural and anthropogenic forcing to changes in temperature extremes over the United States
Author(s) -
Meehl Gerald A.,
Arblaster Julie M.,
Tebaldi Claudia
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2007gl030948
Subject(s) - forcing (mathematics) , climatology , natural (archaeology) , environmental science , atmospheric sciences , climate change , meteorology , geology , geography , oceanography , paleontology
Observations averaged over the U.S. for the second half of the 20th century have shown a decrease of frost days, an increase in growing season length, an increase in the number of warm nights, and an increase in heat wave intensity. For the first three, a nine member multi‐model ensemble shows similar changes over the U.S. in 20th century experiments that combine anthropogenic and natural forcings, though the relative contributions of each are unclear. Here we show results from two global coupled climate models run with anthropogenic and natural forcings separately. Averaged over the continental U.S., they show that the observed changes in the four temperature extremes are accounted for with anthropogenic forcings, but not with natural forcings (even though there are some differences in the details of the forcings). This indicates that most of the changes in temperature extremes over the U.S. are likely due to human activity.