Eltahir et al. (2025) A Theory on Regional Impacts of Global Warming

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Geophysical Research Letters
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-09-27
• Authors: Elfatih A. B. Eltahir, Yeon‐Woo Choi
• DOI: 10.1029/2025gl118808

Research Groups

Not specified in abstract.

Short Summary

This paper proposes a theory explaining how relatively uniform global warming can lead to significantly diverse regional impacts by considering how local background temperatures interact nonlinearly with temperature thresholds governing natural phenomena.

Objective

• To offer a theory explaining how apparently uniform global warming with small variability can produce significantly more diverse regional impacts.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global, with a focus on regional variability.
• Temporal Scale: Not explicitly stated, but implies long-term projections of global warming and its impacts.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Theoretical framework based on temperature thresholds dictating nonlinear reactions of phenomena to surface temperature.
• Data sources: Not specified in abstract; relies on observed and projected global warming patterns and historical temperature distributions.

Main Results

• The nature of regional impacts of global warming (in sign and magnitude) varies significantly in space despite relatively uniform warming, due to how local background temperatures compare to critical temperature thresholds.
• The spatial variability of historical temperature distribution emerges as a significant determinant of projected regional impacts of global warming.

Contributions

• Provides a novel theoretical framework to explain the spatial diversity of regional impacts from relatively uniform global warming.
• Highlights the critical role of temperature thresholds and historical temperature distributions in determining the nature of regional climate change impacts.

Funding

Not specified in abstract.

Citation

@article{Eltahir2025Theory,
  author = {Eltahir, Elfatih A. B. and Choi, Yeon‐Woo},
  title = {A Theory on Regional Impacts of Global Warming},
  journal = {Geophysical Research Letters},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1029/2025gl118808},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1029/2025gl118808}
}