Sensitivity of regional climate to global temperature and forcing
Open accessAbstract
The sensitivity of regional climate to global average radiative forcing and temperature change is important for setting global climate policy targets and designing scenarios. Setting effective policy targets requires an understanding of the consequences exceeding them, even by small amounts, and the effective design of sets of scenarios requires the knowledge of how different emissions, concentrations, or forcing need to be in order to produce substantial differences in climate outcomes. Using an extensive database of climate model simulations, we quantify how differences in global average quantities relate to differences in both the spatial extent and magnitude of climate outcomes at regional (250–1250 km) scales. We show that differences of about 0.3 °C in global average temperature are required to generate statistically significant changes in regional annual average temperature over more than half of the Earth's land surface. A global difference of 0.8 °C is necessary to produce regional warming over half the land surface that is not only significant but reaches at least 1 °C. As much as 2.5 to 3 °C is required for a statistically significant change in regional annual average precipitation that is equally pervasive. Global average temperature change provides a better metric than radiative forcing for indicating differences in regional climate outcomes due to the path dependency of the effects of radiative forcing. For example, a difference in radiative forcing of 0.5 W m −2 can produce statistically significant differences in regional temperature over an area that ranges between 30% and 85% of the land surface, depending on the forcing pathway.
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For regional precipitation, a much wider separation is required to ensure that scenarios are statistically different.
“For regional precipitation, a much wider separation is required to ensure that scenarios are statistically different.”
From The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) for CMIP6 (2016) · cites this paper as Tebaldi et al., 2015
The Sensitivity of regional climate section finds that precipitation changes require a much larger difference in global average temperature than regional temperature changes to become statistically significant over much of the land surface. But the Discussion and conclusions says the authors cannot establish an absolute criterion for scenario separation; the results do not show that any particular separation will ensure statistically different precipitation outcomes. (LLM, conf=0.83)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredInitial studies indicate that scenario differences of at least 0.3°C in global average surface temperature are likely necessary to generate statistically significant differences in local temperature over a substantial fraction of the surface, and substantially larger differences are required to produce similarly significant and extensive differences in precipitation outcomes.
“Initial studies indicate that scenario differences of at least 0.3 • C in global average surface temperature are likely necessary to generate statistically significant differences in local temperature over a substantial fraction of the surface, and substantially larger differences are required to produce similarly significant and extensive differences in precipitation outcomes (Tebaldi et al., 201”
From The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) for CMIP6 (2016) · cites this paper as Tebaldi et al., 2015
More recent work has refined this view, indicating that regional temperature outcomes that are statistically significantly different at a 5 % level for more than half the land surface area, and robustly so across the multi-model ensemble, require a separation of at least 0.3°C in global average temperature.
“More recent work (Tebaldi et al., 2015) has refined this view, indicating that regional temperature outcomes that are statistically significantly different at a 5 % level for more than half the land surface area, and robustly so across the multi-model ensemble, require a separation of at least 0.3 • C in global average temperature.”
From The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) for CMIP6 (2016) · cites this paper as Tebaldi et al., 2015
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Limiting global warming to 2 °C is unlikely to save most coral reefs
Frieler, K., Meinshausen, M., Golly, A., Mengel, M., Lebek, K., Donner, S. D., & Hoegh-Guldberg, O. (2013) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/nclimate1674 · Cited by 485 · see citing works
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The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) for CMIP6
O'Neill, B. C., Tebaldi, C., van Vuuren, D. P., Eyring, V., Friedlingstein, P., Hurtt, G., Knutti, R., Kriegler, E., Lamarque, J.-F., Lowe, J., et al. (2016) · Geoscientific Model Development · doi:10.5194/gmd-9-3461-2016 · Cited by 5,241 · see citing works
“3 C in global average surface temperature are likely necessary to generate statistically significant differences in local temperature over a substantial fraction of the surface, and substantially larger differences are required to produce similarly significant and extensive differences in precipitation outcomes (Tebal…”
InfluentialSelf-citationScenarios towards limiting global mean temperature increase below 1.5 °C
Rogelj, J., Popp, A., Calvin, K. V., Luderer, G., Emmerling, J., Gernaat, D., Fujimori, S., Strefler, J., Hasegawa, T., Marangoni, G., et al. (2018) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/s41558-018-0091-3 · Cited by 1,341 · see citing works
- Authors
- Tebaldi, C., O’Neill, B., & Lamarque, J.-F.
- Affiliations
- NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (US)
- Corresponding author
- Tebaldi, Claudia
- Venue
- Environmental Research Letters
- Publisher
- IOP Publishing
- Published
- 2015-07-01
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 074001
- ISSN
- 1748-9326 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1953258395
- Cited by
- 21
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 2.46
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Environmental Research Letters (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Biological and Environmental Research
- National Science Foundation
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate Change and Environmental Impact
- Keywords
- regional climate sensitivity, global mean temperature change, radiative forcing, climate change scenarios, regional warming, regional precipitation change, land surface temperature, climate targets, climate model simulation
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