Comparative Analysis of the Mechanisms of Intensified Summer Warming over Europe-West Asia and Northeast Asia since the Mid-1990s through a Process-based Decomposition Method

Abstract

Previous studies have found amplified warming over Europe-West Asia and Northeast Asia in summer since the mid-1990s relative to elsewhere on the Eurasian continent, but the cause of the amplification in these two regions remains unclear. In this study, we compared the individual contributions of influential factors for amplified warming over these two regions through a quantitative diagnostic analysis based on CFRAM (climate feedback-response analysis method). The changes in surface air temperature are decomposed into the partial changes due to radiative processes (including CO2 concentration, incident solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere, surface albedo, water vapor content, ozone concentration, and clouds) and non-radiative processes (including surface sensible heat flux, surface latent heat flux, and dynamical processes). Our results suggest that the enhanced warming over these two regions is primarily attributable to changes in the radiative processes, which contributed 0.62 and 0.98 K to the region-averaged warming over Europe-West Asia (1.00 K) and Northeast Asia (1.02 K), respectively. Among the radiative processes, the main drivers were clouds, CO2 concentration, and water vapor content. The cloud term alone contributed to the mean amplitude of warming by 0.40 and 0.85 K in Europe-West Asia and Northeast Asia, respectively. In comparison, the non-radiative processes made a much weaker contribution due to the combined impact of surface sensible heat flux, surface latent heat flux, and dynamical processes, accounting for only 0.38 K for the warming in Europe-West Asia and 0.05 K for the warming in Northeast Asia. The resemblance between the influential factors for the amplified warming in these two separate regions implies a common dynamical origin. Thus, this validates the possibility that they originate from the Silk Road pattern.