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Impacts of natural and anthropogenic forcings on historical and future changes in global-land surface air temperature in CMIP6–DAMIP simulations

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Abstract

To better understand the contributions of various external factors to past and future changes in global and regional climate, this study investigates the impacts of natural and anthropogenic forcings on historical and future changes in global land surface air temperature (GLSAT) using model simulations from the Detection and Attribution Model Intercomparison Project (DAMIP) in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). Results show that the anthropogenic forcing (ANT) can be robustly detected and separated from the response to the natural external forcing (NAT) since the 1970s. The observed warming changes since the 1950s are primarily attributed to the GHG forcing. ANT contributes a robust warming trend of 0.1–0.2 °C per decade for global landmass during 1951–2020 and cumulative warming by 2011–2020 (relative to 1901–1930) of 1.0–1.6 °C. These attributable warmings largely encompass the observed warming trend of ~ 0.18 °C per decade in 1951–2012 and the observed warming of 1.59 °C by 2011–2020 (relative to 1850–1900) for global landmass reported in IPCC AR5 and AR6, respectively. The anthropogenic warming is projected to increase by 3–6 °C for most global landmass under the SSP2-4.5 scenario, especially in the high latitudes Northern Hemisphere by the late twenty-first century, along with an increase in the mean and widespread flattening of the probability distribution functions (PDFs). The anthropogenic aerosol (AA) cooling effect is projected to decrease only modestly, from 0.7 °C in 2011-20 to 0.6 °C by the late 21st century, for the SSP2-4.5 scenario.

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Data Availability

The CMIP6 data were obtained from  https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/. The CRU data are available from https://data.ceda.ac.uk/badc/cru/data/cru_ts.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the climate modeling groups from CMIP6 for making their model output available (https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/). This research is supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2020YFA0608904), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42275185, 41975115, and 42205032), and the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (2021JQ-166).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Chuan Xu & Li Tao

  2. College of Oceanography, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Tianbao Zhao

  3. Key Laboratory of Regional Climate-Environment Research for Temperate East Asia, Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, 100049, China

    Tianbao Zhao & Jingpeng Zhang

  4. College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Lijuan Hua

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  1. Chuan Xu
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Correspondence to Tianbao Zhao.

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Xu, C., Zhao, T., Zhang, J. et al. Impacts of natural and anthropogenic forcings on historical and future changes in global-land surface air temperature in CMIP6–DAMIP simulations. Climatic Change 177, 30 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-024-03686-6

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