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Mapping climate change in European temperature distributions
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Stainforth, David A., Chapman, Sandra C. and Watkins, Nicholas W. (2014) Mapping climate change in European temperature distributions. Environmental Research Letters, Volume 8 (Number 3). Article number 034031. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034031
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034031
Abstract
Climate change poses challenges for decision makers across society, not just in preparing for the climate of the future but even when planning for the climate of the present day. When making climate sensitive decisions, policy makers and adaptation planners would benefit from information on local scales and for user-specific quantiles (e.g. the hottest/coldest 5% of days) and thresholds (e.g. days above 28 ° C), not just mean changes. Here, we translate observations of weather into observations of climate change, providing maps of the changing shape of climatic temperature distributions across Europe since 1950. The provision of such information from observations is valuable to support decisions designed to be robust in today's climate, while also providing data against which climate forecasting methods can be judged and interpreted. The general statement that the hottest summer days are warming faster than the coolest is made decision relevant by exposing how the regions of greatest warming are quantile and threshold dependent. In a band from Northern France to Denmark, where the response is greatest, the hottest days in the temperature distribution have seen changes of at least 2 ° C, over four times the global mean change over the same period. In winter the coldest nights are warming fastest, particularly in Scandinavia.
Item Type: | Journal Item | ||||||||
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Subjects: | Q Science > QC Physics | ||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Physics | ||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Climatic changes, Atmospheric temperature -- Europe | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Environmental Research Letters | ||||||||
Publisher: | IOP Publishing Ltd | ||||||||
ISSN: | 1748-9326 | ||||||||
Official Date: | 11 September 2014 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | Volume 8 | ||||||||
Number: | Number 3 | ||||||||
Number of Pages: | 10 | ||||||||
Article Number: | Article number 034031 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034031 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 27 December 2015 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 27 December 2015 | ||||||||
Funder: | Sixth Framework Programme (European Commission) (FP6), Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC), Science and Technology Facilities Council (Great Britain) (STFC), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Natural Environment Research Council (Great Britain) (NERC), British Antarctic Survey |
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