TY - JOUR

T1 - Early onset of industrial-era warming across the oceans and continents

AU - Abram, Nerilie J.

AU - McGregor, Helen V.

AU - Tierney, Jessica E.

AU - Evans, Michael N.

AU - McKay, Nicholas P.

AU - Kaufman, Darrell S.

AU - the PAGES 2k Consortium

AU - Thirumalai, Kaustubh

AU - Martrat, Belen

AU - Goosse, Hugues

AU - Phipps, Steven J.

AU - Steig, Eric J.

AU - Kilbourne, K. Halimeda

AU - Saenger, Casey P.

AU - Zinke, Jens

AU - Leduc, Guillaume

AU - Addison, Jason A.

AU - Mortyn, P. Graham

AU - Seidenkrantz, Marit Solveig

AU - Sicre, Marie Alexandrine

AU - Selvaraj, Kandasamy

AU - Von Gunten, Lucien

AU - Filipsson, Helena L.

AU - Neukom, Raphael

AU - Gergis, Joelle

AU - Curran, Mark A J

PY - 2016/8/24

Y1 - 2016/8/24

N2 - The evolution of industrial-era warming across the continents and oceans provides a context for future climate change and is important for determining climate sensitivity and the processes that control regional warming. Here we use post-ad 1500 palaeoclimate records to show that sustained industrial-era warming of the tropical oceans first developed during the mid-nineteenth century and was nearly synchronous with Northern Hemisphere continental warming. The early onset of sustained, significant warming in palaeoclimate records and model simulations suggests that greenhouse forcing of industrial-era warming commenced as early as the mid-nineteenth century and included an enhanced equatorial ocean response mechanism. The development of Southern Hemisphere warming is delayed in reconstructions, but this apparent delay is not reproduced in climate simulations. Our findings imply that instrumental records are too short to comprehensively assess anthropogenic climate change and that, in some regions, about 180 years of industrial-era warming has already caused surface temperatures to emerge above pre-industrial values, even when taking natural variability into account.

AB - The evolution of industrial-era warming across the continents and oceans provides a context for future climate change and is important for determining climate sensitivity and the processes that control regional warming. Here we use post-ad 1500 palaeoclimate records to show that sustained industrial-era warming of the tropical oceans first developed during the mid-nineteenth century and was nearly synchronous with Northern Hemisphere continental warming. The early onset of sustained, significant warming in palaeoclimate records and model simulations suggests that greenhouse forcing of industrial-era warming commenced as early as the mid-nineteenth century and included an enhanced equatorial ocean response mechanism. The development of Southern Hemisphere warming is delayed in reconstructions, but this apparent delay is not reproduced in climate simulations. Our findings imply that instrumental records are too short to comprehensively assess anthropogenic climate change and that, in some regions, about 180 years of industrial-era warming has already caused surface temperatures to emerge above pre-industrial values, even when taking natural variability into account.

U2 - 10.1038/nature19082

DO - 10.1038/nature19082

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 27558063

AN - SCOPUS:84984905560

VL - 536

SP - 411

EP - 418

JO - Nature

JF - Nature

SN - 0028-0836

IS - 7617

ER -