How likely is an El Niño to break the global mean surface temperature record during the 21st century?

Hsu, Chia-Wei; Yin, Jianjun

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab3b82

i

How likely is an El Niño to break the global mean surface temperature record during the 21st century?

2019
By Hsu, Chia-Wei ; Yin, Jianjun

Details

Journal Title:

Environmental Research Letters
Personal Author:

Hsu, Chia-Wei ; Yin, Jianjun
NOAA Program & Office:

OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research)
Description:

The likelihood of an El Niño breaking the annual global mean surface temperature (GMST) record during the 21st century is derived from 38 climate models from the Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We find that, under a low emission scenario, one out of three El Niño events break the GMST record. The probability significantly increases to four out of five in a high emission scenario. About half of strong El Niños, but only one-fifth of weak El Niños, can set new GMST records in a low emission scenario. By contrast, even weak El Niños break the GMST record more regularly (68 ± 8% chance) in a high emission scenario. Both a stronger El Niño and a higher emission scenario induce a higher record-breaking GMST with a magnitude range from 0.03°C to 0.21°C above the previous record. El Niño accounts for more than half of record-breaking GMST occurrences in all emission scenarios. A comparison between CMIP3, CMIP5, and CMIP6 suggests that the analyses are not affected by model generations.
Keywords:

General Environmental Science Public Health, Environmental And Occupational Health Renewable Energy, Sustainability And The Environment Public Health, Environmental And Occupational Health Renewable Energy, Sustainability And The Environment Public Health, Environmental And Occupational Health Renewable Energy, Sustainability And The Environment
Source:

Environmental Research Letters, 14(9), 094017
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab3b82
ISSN:

1748-9326
Format:

PDF
Publisher:

IOP Publishing
Document Type:

Journal Article
Funding:

Grant no. NA18OAR4310267
License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Rights Information:

CC BY
Compliance:

Library
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha256:d767328522fd5cf1b38ed1e52426b97f6590bda70d15b317dc94dbc893bdb42e
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/58916/noaa_58916_DS1.pdf
File Type:

[PDF - 1.35 MB ]

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