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Sensitivity of the attribution of near surface temperature warming to the choice of observational dataset
Author(s) -
Jones G. S.,
Stott P. A.
Publication year - 2011
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 - 10.1029/2011gl049324
Subject(s) - sensitivity (control systems) , observational study , climatology , environmental science , attribution , meteorology , atmospheric sciences , geology , geography , statistics , psychology , mathematics , social psychology , engineering , electronic engineering
A number of studies have demonstrated that much of the recent warming in global near surface temperatures can be attributed to increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gases. While this conclusion has been shown to be robust in analyses using a variety of climate models there have not been equivalent studies using different available observational datasets. Here we repeat the analyses as reported previously using an updated observational dataset and other independently processed datasets of near surface temperatures. We conclude that the choice of observational dataset has little impact on the attribution of greenhouse gas warming and other anthropogenic cooling contributions to observed warming on a global scale over the 20th century, however this robust conclusion may not hold for other periods or for smaller sub‐regions. Our results show that the dominant contributor to global warming over the last 50 years of the 20th century is that due to greenhouse gases.