Journal article
The timing of anthropogenic emergence in simulated climate extremes
AD King, MG Donat, EM Fischer, E Hawkins, LV Alexander, DJ Karoly, AJ Dittus, SC Lewis, SE Perkins
Environmental Research Letters | IOP PUBLISHING LTD | Published : 2015
Abstract
Determining the time of emergence of climates altered from their natural state by anthropogenic influences can help inform the development of adaptation and mitigation strategies to climate change. Previous studies have examined the time of emergence of climate averages. However, at the global scale, the emergence of changes in extreme events, which have the greatest societal impacts, has not been investigated before. Based on state-of-the-art climate models, we show that temperature extremes generally emerge slightly later from their quasi-natural climate state than seasonal means, due to greater variability in extremes. Nevertheless, according to model evidence, both hot and cold extremes ..
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Grants
Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank the editor for handling this paper and the reviewers for their constructive feedback. We thank Andy Pitman, Rowan Sutton, and Blair Trewin for commenting on the paper. Andrew King was supported by Australian Research Council grant RM08448. Andrew King, Markus Donat, Lisa Alexander, David Karoly, Andrea Dittus, and Sophie Lewis were supported by Australian Research Council grant CE110001028. Markus Donat was also supported by Australian Research Council grant DE150100456. Lisa Alexander and David Karoly were also supported by Australian Research Council grant LP100200690. Sarah Perkins was supported by Australian Research Council grant DE140100952. Ed Hawkins was supported by the UK National Environmental Research Council (grant NE/I020792/1) and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS-Climate). We acknowledge the support of the NCI facility in Australia. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the US Department of Energy's Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals.