Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 3 November 1995:
Vol. 270. no. 5237, pp. 780 - 783
DOI: 10.1126/science.270.5237.780
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Dynamic Contribution to Hemispheric Mean Temperature Trends

John M. Wallace,  Yuan Zhang,  James A. Renwick

On the basis of land station data from the Northern Hemisphere, it was determined that roughly half of the temporal variance of monthly mean hemispheric mean anomalies in surface air temperature during the period from 1900 through 1990 were linearly related to the amplitude of a distinctive spatial pattern in which the oceans are anomalously cold and the continents are anomalously warm poleward of 40 degrees north when the hemisphere is warm. Apart from an upward trend since 1975, to which El Niño has contributed, the amplitude time series associated with this pattern resembles seasonally dependent white noise. It is argued that the variability associated with this pattern is dynamically induced and is not necessarily an integral part of the fingerprint of global warming.


Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Box 351640, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-1640, USA.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Can increasing carbon dioxide cause climate change?.
R. S. Lindzen (1997)
PNAS 94, 8335-8342
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)