Tian et al. (2025) Global Patterns of Increasing Interannual Variability of Surface Air Temperature throughout the Holocene

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

Identification

• Journal: Journal of Climate
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-11-18
• Authors: Zhiping Tian, Dabang Jiang, Jiawen Shi
• DOI: 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0117.1

Research Groups

Not explicitly mentioned in the provided abstract.

Short Summary

This study examines the interannual variability of surface air temperature throughout the Holocene using new transient simulations, revealing a global increase in variability since 11.5 ka primarily driven by orbital forcing and energy balance changes, with regional influences from ice sheet retreat and ocean-atmosphere interactions.

Objective

• To examine the interannual variability of surface air temperature throughout the Holocene and the associated mechanisms.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global, with regional analyses focusing on low latitudes, mid- to high-latitude oceans, the Arctic Ocean, and northern continents.
• Temporal Scale: Holocene period, spanning from 11.5 ka before present to the preindustrial period (1850 CE).

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Not explicitly named, but described as a "new set of Holocene transient simulations."
• Data sources: Holocene transient simulations; proxy data (used for qualitative consistency comparison).

Main Results

• The interannual variability of annual, winter, and summer surface air temperature increased globally since 11.5 ka with linear trends of 0.005 °C/ka, 0.007 °C/ka, and 0.005 °C/ka, respectively.
• This temperature variability evolution is primarily explained by orbital forcing in most regions, with an additional impact from the retreat of ice sheets over North America and Europe, and minimal effect from changes in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.
• Variations in energy balance components contribute to the enhanced temperature variability by a global mean of 8%–10% in response to insolation changes.
• Surface net heat flux and radiation flux at the top of the atmosphere generally play dominant roles in energy balance changes, partially offset by atmospheric energy convergence minus storage at the global scale.
• Regionally, cloud effects and sea surface temperature variability are important in low latitudes, while sea ice changes are the main factors in mid- to high-latitude oceans.
• Seasonal differences in temperature variability change, particularly in the Arctic Ocean and northern continents, result from the seasonal contrast in insolation and varying responses of global surface mean temperature, its meridional gradient, sea ice fraction, total cloud, and surface soil moisture.
• The simulated temperature variability change throughout the Holocene is qualitatively consistent with most available proxy data.

Contributions

• Provides a new set of Holocene transient simulations to investigate global year-to-year surface air temperature variability.
• Quantifies the increasing trend of interannual temperature variability across annual and seasonal scales throughout the Holocene.
• Identifies orbital forcing as the primary driver of Holocene temperature variability evolution, detailing the roles of energy balance components (surface net heat flux, radiation flux, atmospheric energy convergence) and regional factors (ice sheets, clouds, sea surface temperature, sea ice).
• Deepens the understanding of the evolution and underlying mechanisms of global temperature variability under past warming backgrounds.

Funding

Not explicitly mentioned in the provided abstract.

Citation

@article{Tian2025Global,
  author = {Tian, Zhiping and Jiang, Dabang and Shi, Jiawen},
  title = {Global Patterns of Increasing Interannual Variability of Surface Air Temperature throughout the Holocene},
  journal = {Journal of Climate},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1175/jcli-d-25-0117.1},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1175/jcli-d-25-0117.1}
}