Spatiotemporal characteristics of the time of emergence for anthropogenic tropospheric temperature changes based on the CMIP6 multi-model results

Abstract In the 20th century, with the intensification of human activities, the Earth is experiencing unprecedented warming. However, there are certain differences in the sensitivity of temperature changes to anthropogenic forcings in different regions and at different altitudes of the troposphere. The time of emergence (TOE) is the key point at which the anthropogenic climate change signal exceeds from the internal climate variability serving as a noise. It is a crucial variable for climate change detection, climate prediction and risk assessment. Here, we systematically analyzed the spatiotemporal characteristics of the TOE of temperature changes over the past century by calculating the SNR based on the selected CMIP6 multi-model outputs. The results show that the temperature TOE, particularly in the lower and middle troposphere, shows distinct latitude dependence, displaying an ‘M-type’ distribution from the Antarctic to the Arctic: it first appears in low-latitudes, followed by high-latitudes, and last appears in the two mid latitude bands. For the tropics, the TOE of tropospheric temperatures becomes earlier with increasing altitude: the TOE of air temperatures at the surface, mid-tropospheric 500 hPa and upper-tropospheric 200 hPa occurs in 1980 ± 15, 1965 ± 20, and 1930 ± 30, respectively. The TOEs of tropospheric temperatures in eastern equatorial Pacific are 10–30 years later than those in the western equatorial Pacific. For the regional TOEs of surface air temperature diverse differences exist on land and ocean in various latitudes of two hemispheres.