Observations and Future Projections (Scientific basis)

1. Introduction: indicators of climate change and treatment of uncertainties

2. Observations: atmosphere, ocean and surface
3. Detection and attribution of climate change: from global to regional

Jose A. Marengo
Head, Research and Development
CEMADEN
jose.marengo@cenaden.gov.br
Sources of climate forcing
Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age: Natural climate change
Evidences of Little Ice Age
Causes of Little Ice Age
Explosive Volcanic
Eruptions: Proof of
Fast-Response Climate
Change Due to Forcing

Changing forcing
changes the
temperature (and
water vapor, etc.).

If volcanoes can cool,

then GHG must
warm.
Human causes of climate change
Human causes of climate change
Human causes of climate change
Human causes of climate change
Detection and attribution as forensics
One global climate
model's reconstruction
of temperature change
during the 20th century
as the result of five
studied forcing factors
and the amount of
temperature change
attributed to each
 Attribution of climate change

Attribution of recent climate change is the effort to scientifically ascertain mechanisms

responsible for recent climate changes on Earth, commonly known as 'global warming'. The
effort has focused on changes observed during the period of instrumental temperature
record, when records are most reliable; particularly in the last 50 years, when human activity
has grown fastest and observations of the troposphere have become available. The dominant
mechanisms are anthropogenic, i.e., the result of human activity.

increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases

global changes to land surface, such as deforestation
increasing atmospheric concentrations of aerosols.

There are also natural mechanisms for variation including climate oscillations, changes in
solar activity, and volcanic activity.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is "extremely likely"

that human influence was the dominant cause of global warming between 1951 and
2010.[4] The IPCC defines "extremely likely" as indicating a probability of 95 to 100%, based
on an expert assessment of all the available evidence.[5]
 Multiple lines of evidence support attribution of recent
climate change to human activities:

A basic physical understanding of the climate system: greenhouse gas concentrations have
increased and their warming properties are well-established.

Historical estimates of past climate changes suggest that the recent changes in global
surface temperature are unusual.

Computer-based climate models are unable to replicate the observed warming unless
human greenhouse gas emissions are included.

Natural forces alone (such as solar and volcanic activity) cannot explain the observed
warming.
(Top) The variations of the
observed global mean surface
temperature anomaly from
Hadley Centre/Climatic Research
Unit gridded surface
temperature data set version 3
(HadCRUT3, black line) and the
best multivariate fits using the
method of Lean (red line),
Lockwood (pink line), Folland
(green line) and Kaufmann (blue
line). (Below) The contributions
to the fit from (a) El Nio-
Southern Oscillation (ENSO), (b)
volcanoes, (c) solar forcing, (d)
anthropogenic forcing and (e)
other factors (Atlantic Multi-
decadal Oscillation (AMO) for
Folland and a 17.5-year cycle,
semi-annual oscillation (SAO),
and Arctic Oscillation (AO) from
Lean).
Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes
in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and
in changes in some climate extremes. This evidence for human influence has grown since AR4.
It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed
warming since the mid-20th century.
 Detection and Attribution of Climate Change
Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in
changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise,
and in changes in some climate extremes. This evidence for human influence has grown since
AR4. It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed
warming since the mid-20th century.

Attribution studies of global zonal mean terrestrial precipitation and Arctic precipitation both
find a detectable anthropogenic influence. Overall there is medium confidence in a significant
human influence on global scale changes in precipitation patterns, including increases in NH
mid-to-high latitudes.

Several new attribution studies have found a detectable anthropogenic influence in the
observed increased frequency of warm days and nights and decreased frequency of cold days
and nights.

Human influence has been detected in nearly all of the major assessed components of the
climate system.

there is low confidence in attribution of changes in tropical cyclone activity to human

influence. This is due to insufficient observational evidence, lack of physical understanding of
the links between anthropogenic drivers of climate and tropical cyclone activity, and the low
level of agreement between studies as to the relative importance of internal variability, and
anthropogenic and natural forcings.
 Detection and Attribution of Climate Change

Owing to the low confidence in observed large-scale trends in dryness combined with
difficulties in distinguishing decadal-scale variability in drought from long-term climate
change, there is now low confidence in the attribution of changes in drought over global land
since the mid-20th century to human influence.

Changes in the water cycle remain less reliably modelled in both their changes and their
internal variability, limiting confidence in attribution assessments.

The ability to simulate changes in frequency and intensity of extreme events is limited by the
ability of models to reliably simulate mean changes in key features.

Attribution of changes in monsoon to human influence generally has low confidence

Further evidence has accumulated of the detection and attribution of anthropogenic

influence on temperature change in different parts of the world

Physical understanding is required to assess what constitutes a plausible discrepancy above

that expected from internal variability.Even with complete consistency between models and
data, attribution statements can never be made with 100% certainty because of the presence
of internal variability.
 There are four core elements to any detection and attribution study:

1. Observations of one or more climate variables, such as surface temperature, that are
understood, on physical grounds, to be relevant to the process in question

2. An estimate of how external drivers of climate change have evolved before and during
the period under investigation, including both the driver whose influence is being
investigated (such as rising GHG levels) and potential confounding influences (such as
solar activity)

3. A quantitative physically based understanding, normally encapsulated in a model, of how

these external drivers are thought to have affected these observed climate variables

4. An estimate, often but not always derived from a physically based model, of the
characteristics of variability expected in these observed climate variables due to random,
quasi-periodic and chaotic fluctuations generated in the climate system that are not due
to externally driven climate change
 Attribution of climate extreme events

Climate change is no doubt altering the atmospheric

circulation, but the change is relatively small and can
only be discerned from a very large ensemble of
model runs. That sets the change in odds.

But for any event, the particular character of that

storm or synoptic situation and natural variability
rule, while thermodynamic effects increase the
impacts.

Source: Trenberth et al., 2015

 Attribution of climate extreme events

Attributing an event solely to either human-induced climate change or natural

variability can be misleading when both are invariably in play.

The conventional attribution framework struggles with dynamically driven

extremes because of the small signal-to-noise ratios and often uncertain nature of
the forced changes.

It is more useful to regard the extreme circulation regime or weather event as being
largely unaffected by climate change, and question whether known changes in the
climate systems thermodynamic state affected the impact of the particular event.

The snowmaggedon in February 2010 in Washington DC, superstorm Sandy in

October 2012 and supertyphoon Haiyan in November 2013, and the Boulder floods
of September 2013, all of which were influenced by high sea surface temperatures
that had a discernible human component.
 Attribution of climate extreme events

Research is pursued worldwide that aims to determine if a particular observed

extreme event has become more or less likely due to climate change. A recent
paper (King et al 2015) uses two methods to quantify how much more likely a
record hot year in Central England has become. One of the methods is based
largely on climate modeling, the other on interpreting the observed record. This is
an important step towards improving the reliability of event attribution results.
Improved understanding and prediction of changes in extreme events is
recognized as one of thegrand challenges in climate research.

Extreme weather and climate events demonstrate the vulnerability of society and
ecosystems, and bring climate change into the public s interest far more than
changes in global mean temperature do. Hence research that determines if a
particular observed extreme event has become more or less likely due to climate
change, and by how much, is pursued world-wide (Peterson et al 2014).
Global, land, ocean
and continental
annual mean
temperatures for
CMIP3 and CMIP5
historical (red) and
historical Natural
(blue) simulations
(multi-model means
shown as thick lines,
and 5 to 95% ranges
shown as thin light
lines) and for Hadley
Centre/Climatic
Research Unit
gridded surface
temperature data
set 4 (HadCRUT4,
black).
Time series of global and annual-averaged surface temperature change from 1860 to 2010. The
from two ensemble of climate models driven with just natural forcings and driven with both
natural forcing and human-induced changes in greenhouse gases and aerosols.
Spatial patterns of local surface temperature trends from 1951 to 2010 from CMIP5 simulations
driven with just natural forcings, with natural + human forcings and observed trends from the
Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit gridded surface temperature data set 4 (HadCRUT4)
during this period.
Comparison of observed global ocean heat content for the upper 700 m (updated from
Domingues et al. 2008) with simulations from ten CMIP5 models that included only natural
forcings (HistoricalNat runs shown in blue lines) and simulations that included natural and
anthropogenic forcings (Historical runs in pink lines). Grey shading shows observational
uncertainty. The global mean stratospheric optical depth (Sato et al., 1993) in beige at the
bottom indicates the major volcanic eruptions and the brown curve is a 3-year running average
of these values.
Time series of projected
temperature change shown
at four representative
locations for summer and
winter. Each time series is
surrounded by an envelope
of projected changes
yielded by 24 different
CMIP5 model simulations,
emerging from a grey
envelope of natural local
variability simulated by the
models using early 20th
century conditions. The
warming signal emerges
first in the tropics during
summer. The
central map shows the
global temperature increase
(C) needed for
temperatures in summer at
individual locations to
emerge from the envelope
of early 20th century
variability.
Detection and attribution signals in some elements of the climate system at global scales
(bottom four panels). Brown panels are land surface temperature time series, green panels are
precipitation time series, blue panels are ocean heat content time series and white panels are
sea ice time series. Observations are shown on each panel in black or black and shades of grey.
Blue shading is the model time series for natural forcing simulations and pink shading is the
combined natural and anthropogenic forcings. The dark blue and dark red lines are the
ensemble means from the model simulations. All panels show the 5 to 95% intervals of the
natural forcing simulations, and the natural and anthropogenic forcing simulations.
 Easterling et al (2016)

Point-wise linear trend over the 19512014 period annual maximum daily high temperature
(TXx) using GHCNDEX on a 2.52.5 latitude/longitude grid Units: C/ ear, stippling indicates
statistically significant trends(p0.05).
 Easterling et al (2016)

Pointwise linear trend over the 19512014 period in annual maximum 5 day total precipitation
(Rx5day) using GHCNDEX on a 2.52.5 latitude/longitude grid. Units: mm year, stippling
indicates statistically significant trends(p0.05).
 Easterling et al (2016)

Pointwise linear trend over the 1951 2014 period in the annual consecutive dry days(CDD)
using GHCNDEX on a 2.52.5 latitude/longitude grid. Units:days year, stippling indicates
statistically significant trends(p0.05).
 Easterling et al (2016)

Trend (%/decade) for the period of 19512014 in the number of 5- day duration cold spells
with mean temperature less than the threshold for a 1-in-5yr recurrence. Grid box(44)
averages calculated from 5084 stations with less than 10% missing daily temperature data for
19512014. Grid boxes with statistically significant trends (computed with non parametric
Mann-Kendall test)identified with white dots. Data used are from the Global Historical
Climatology Network-Daily dataset (Menne etal., 2011).
 Easterling et al (2016)

Probability distribution
functions of the trends in two
extreme temperature metrics
for the coterminous United
States for 1956 2005. Metrics
include (a) annual maximum
value of daily maximum
temperature; and (b) annual
minimum value of daily
minimum temperature. The
CMIP5 model trend
distributions are shown for 7
8historical forcing (natural and
anthropogenic) simulations
from 29 CMIP5 models (red)
and for 35 natural forcing only
simulations from 15 CMIP5
models (blue).The observed
U.S. trend is shown in gray.
 Xu et al (2015)

Estimated trend of
annual mean
temperatures (C
change over 45 yr) over
China under different
forcings during the
period 19612005.
OBS: observed trend;
ALL: includes
anthropogenic and
natural external
forcings; NAT: includes
only solar
irradiance and volcanic
activity; GHG:
greenhouse gases; LU:
land use change; ANT:
anthropogenic
influences
 Sarojini et al (2016)

Time-series of global mean

precipitation anomalies
(mm d-1) with respect to
the baseline period of
19611990, simulated by
CMIP5 models forced with,
both anthropogenic and
natural forcings (All;
orange/red lines) and
natural forcings only (Nat.,
blue lines). land and ocean
(a), land (b) and ocean (c)
with all grid points. Multi-
model means are shown in
thick solid lines. Green
stars show statistically
significant changes at 5%
level.
 Xu et al (2015)
Annual mean
temperature
anomalies averaged
across China from
observation and
model simulations
during the period of
19612005. Shaded
bands: multi-model
range. OBS:
observed trend;
ANT: anthropogenic
influ ences; NAT:
includes only solar
irradiance and
volcanic ac-
tivity; GHG:
greenhouse gases;
AA: anthropogenic
aerosols;
LU: land use change
http://www.ametsoc.net
Socioeconomic development interacts with
natural climate variations and human-caused
climate change to influence disaster risk

Increasing vulnerability, exposure,

or severity and frequency of
climate events increases disaster
risk
Social vulnerability and exposure are key
determinants of disaster risk and help explain why
non-extreme physical events and chronic hazards
can also lead to extreme impacts and disasters,
while some extreme events do not.
Future Climate Changes, Risks and Impacts
Water, food and urban systems, human health, security and livelihoods

Key risk
Reduced access to water dor fural and urban poor people due to water scarcity and increasing
competition for water (high confidence)
Adaptation issues Risk & potential for
Climatic Drivers Timeframe
& prospects adaptation
Very Very
Medium
Adaptation through reducting low high
water use is not na option for the
many people already lacking Present
adequete access to safe water.
Access to water is subject to Near-term
various forms of discrimination, (2030-2040)
for instance due to gender and
location. Poor and marginalized 2oC
water users are unable to Long-term
compete with water extraction by (2080-2100)
4oC
industries, large-scale agriculture,
and other powerfull users.
Urban agglomerations by size class and potential risk of
flooding

47
Urban agglomerations by size class and potential risk of
flooding

1970 2011

48
Urban agglomerations by size class and potential risk of
droughts

49
Urban agglomerations by size class and potential risk of
droughts

1970 2011

50
Percentage of urban population and agglomerations by
size class, 2011

World Urbanization Prospects, the 2011 Revision

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population 51
Division
 Natural disasters related to climate (1995-2015)

Sub-ttulo 24pt

Corpo 18pt

FONTE: CRED-UNISDR 2015

Population

Source of population grid: IBGE

Rural communities
 Urban centers

Porto Velho, RO Manaus, AM

Santarm, PA Belm, PA