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Attribution of Detected Temperature Trends in Southeast Brazil
Author(s) -
Abreu R. C.,
Tett S. F. B.,
Schurer A.,
Rocha H. R.
Publication year - 2019
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 - 10.1029/2019gl083003
Subject(s) - coupled model intercomparison project , greenhouse gas , forcing (mathematics) , climatology , environmental science , climate change , atmospheric sciences , global warming , attribution , global temperature , climate model , meteorology , geography , geology , psychology , social psychology , oceanography
11 Southeast Brazil has great economic importance for Brazil and is highly vulnerable to 12 extreme events like floods and droughts. Studies have shown an increase of temperature 13 in this region. Using a new Detection and Attribution framework (Ribes et al., 2017) and 14 CMIP5 models this change is found to be largely due to greenhouse gases. We estimate 15 that greenhouse gases contribute a warming of 0.95 to 1.5 C to the observed warming 16 trend of 1.1 C between 1955-2004. Temperature changes from natural and non-greenhouse 17 gas anthropogenic forcing are estimated to be small over this period. Results are robust 18 using different time windows. Using the Community Earth System Model ensembles to 19 evaluate the impacts of internal variability, observational and model error shows that most 20 uncertainty arises from model error. 21 Plain Language Summary 22 Southeast Brazil has great economic importance for Brazil and is highly vulner23 able to extreme events like floods, droughts and heatwaves. Many studies link those kind 24 of events with an increase in temperature due to climate change, largely caused by in25 creasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. This study tested whether or 26 not human induced climate change is responsible for the observed increase in temper27 ature in Southeast Brazil. The observed 1.1 C per 50 years trend is largely due to in28 creasing greenhouse gases, which means they have a significant role in observed changes 29 in Southeast Brazilian temperatures. 30