Attribution of differences in observed warming among subregions of China and observationally constrained projection

Abstract

AbstractUnderstanding the impact of different external forcings on regional temperature changes in China and constraining future changes is important for formulating targeted climate mitigation policies. We conducted a detection and attribution analysis to examine the effects of different external forcings on the differences in warming across China and seven subregions. This analysis spanned from 1965 to 2014 and used observations as well as data from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models. The signals of anthropogenic (ANT) forcing can be detected and separated from natural (NAT) forcing in all regions, and the effect of greenhouse gases are found to account for a significant portion of the observed warming in these regions. In the Yangtze River Basin, southeast China and southwest China, the observed warming trends are lower than other subregions. This can be attributed to the relatively weak impact of greenhouse gases, resulting in a temperature increase of only 0.51°C in the Yangtze River Basin, which accounts for 48.57% of the observed warming. While both southeast China and southwest China experience a cooling effect of aerosols, leading to temperature decreases of 0.20 and 0.53°C, respectively, even though the signal of aerosol forcing is not detected. In terms of future projection, the use of attribution constraint approach effectively corrects the biases of the CMIP6 model simulation and reduces projection uncertainty in China and most subregions under the new shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) SSP2‐4.5 and SSP5‐8.5. The Tibetan Plateau has the largest reduction of the uncertainty range among seven subregions, with the decrease of 39.02% under SSP2‐4.5 scenario in the long‐term (2081–2098). In addition, north China and southwest China will experience the highest and lowest warming in the long‐term (2081–2098) after attribution constraints, increasing by 3.41 and 2.14°C, respectively, under SSP2‐4.5 scenario.