Contributions of External Forcing and Internal Climate Variability to Changes in the Summer Surface Air Temperature over East Asia

Summer mean (June, July, and August) surface air temperature (SSAT) in East Asia during the period from 1958 to 2001 has shown a warming. However, the relative contributions of external forcing (EF) and internal climate variability (ICV) to the SSAT changes over East Asia remain unclear. In this study, a new approach is applied to estimate the changes in the SSAT determined by the effects of EF and ICV over East Asia during the period from 1958 to 2001. Reanalysis data as well as simulated results from both global atmosphere-ocean coupled model outputs and a regional climate model (RCM) are used for this approach. The observed SSATs over East Asia have undergone a decreasing trend from 1958 to 1972 (-0.14 degrees C decade(-1), p < 0.01) and an increasing trend after 1972 (0.24 degrees C decade(-1), p < 0.01). While these features are not captured by the reanalysis studied here, they are reproduced when the reanalysis output is downscaled using an RCM. The effects of the EF and the ICV on the SSAT can be separated based on the RCM downscaling simulation. The results show that the SSAT with EF displayed significant warming over most regions of East Asia, whereas the SSAT with ICV mainly exhibited cooling over East Asia. Furthermore, EF mainly influenced the decadal changes of the SSAT, whereas the ICV mainly influenced the interannual changes in the SSAT over East Asia. The interannual changes of the SSAT over East Asia that were influenced by the ICV are mainly manifested as the combined effects of the large-scale ocean-atmosphere circulations, which expressed 79% explanatory power on the SSAT changes.

Automated summary

This study investigates the contributions of external forcing and internal climate variability to the summer surface air temperature changes in East Asia from 1958 to 2001. The results show that external forcing mainly leads to warming, while internal climate variability mainly leads to cooling in East Asia. Additionally, external forcing influences decadal changes in surface air temperature, while internal climate variability influences interannual changes.