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Time of emergence of anthropogenic warming signals in the Northeast Asia assessed from multi-regional climate models

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Abstract

Time of Emergence (ToE) is the time at which the signal of climate change emerges from the background noise of natural climate variability, and can provide useful information for climate change impacts and adaptations. This study examines future ToEs for daily maximum and minimum temperatures over the Northeast Asia using five Regional Climate Models (RCMs) simulations driven by single Global Climate Model (GCM) under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) emission scenarios. Noise is defined based on the interannual variability during the present-day period (1981-2010) and warming signals in the future years (2021-2100) are compared against the noise in order to identify ToEs. Results show that ToEs of annual mean temperatures occur between 2030s and 2040s in RCMs, which essentially follow those of the driving GCM. This represents the dominant influence of GCM boundary forcing on RCM results in this region. ToEs of seasonal temperatures exhibit larger ranges from 2030s to 2090s. The seasonality of ToE is found to be determined majorly by noise amplitudes. The earliest ToE appears in autumn when the noise is smallest while the latest ToE occurs in winter when the noise is largest. The RCP4.5 scenario exhibits later emergence years than the RCP8.5 scenario by 5-35 years. The significant delay in ToEs by taking the lower emission scenario provides an important implication for climate change mitigation. Daily minimum temperatures tend to have earlier emergence than daily maximum temperature but with low confidence. It is also found that noise thresholds can strongly affect ToE years, i.e. larger noise threshold induces later emergence, indicating the importance of noise estimation in the ToE assessment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Korea

    Donghyun Lee, Seung-Ki Min & Changyong Park

  2. Department of Atmospheric Science, Kongju National University, Kongju, Korea

    Myoung-Seok Suh

  3. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Pusan National University, Busan, Korea

    Joong-Bae Ahn

  4. School of Urban and Environmental Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, Korea

    Dong-Hyun Cha

  5. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

    Dong-Kyou Lee

  6. Korea Institute of Atmospheric Prediction Systems, Seoul, Korea

    Song-You Hong

  7. Korea Meteorological Administration, Seoul, Korea

    Seong-Chan Park

  8. National Institute of Meteorological Sciences, Jeju, Korea

    Hyun-Suk Kang

  9. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, 37673, Korea

    Seung-Ki Min

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  1. Donghyun Lee
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  2. Seung-Ki Min
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  3. Changyong Park
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  4. Myoung-Seok Suh
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  5. Joong-Bae Ahn
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  6. Dong-Hyun Cha
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  7. Dong-Kyou Lee
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  9. Seong-Chan Park
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Correspondence to Seung-Ki Min.

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Lee, D., Min, SK., Park, C. et al. Time of emergence of anthropogenic warming signals in the Northeast Asia assessed from multi-regional climate models. Asia-Pacific J Atmos Sci 52, 129–137 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13143-016-0014-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13143-016-0014-z

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