Role of radiatively forced temperature changes in enhanced semi-arid warming over East Asia

Abstract

As the climate change occurred over East Asia since 1950s, intense interest and debate have arisen concerning the contribution of human activities to the warming observed in previous decades. In this study, we investigate surface temperature change using a recently developed methodology that can successfully identify and separate the dynamically induced temperature (DIT) and radiatively forced temperature (RFT) changes in raw surface air temperature (SAT) data. For regional averages, DIT and RFT make 43.7 and 56.3 % contributions to the SAT over East Asia, respectively. The DIT changes dominate the SAT decadal variability and are mainly determined by internal climate variability, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). The radiatively forced SAT changes made major contribution to the global-scale warming trend and the regional-scale enhanced semi-arid warming (ESAW). Such enhanced warming is also found in radiatively forced daily maximum and minimum SAT. The long-term global-mean SAT warming trend is mainly related to radiative forcing produced by global well-mixed greenhouse gases. The regional anthropogenic radiative forcing, however, caused the enhanced warming in the semi-arid region, which may be closely associated with local human activities. Finally, the relationship between global warming hiatus and regional enhanced warming is discussed.