Attribution articles within Nature

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Snowpack reconstructions for major river basins in the Northern Hemisphere reveal that the snowpack has declined in almost half of the basins, with roughly one-third of the declines attributable to human-induced warming.

    • Alexander R. Gottlieb
    •  & Justin S. Mankin

  • Article |

    Dipolar precipitation change in High Mountain Asia during summer is primarily driven by weakened westerly jet and decadal variations in the South Asian monsoon, and the dipolar pattern is projected to shift to a monopolar wetting trend in the 2040s.

    • Jie Jiang
    • , Tianjun Zhou
    •  & Ziming Chen

  • Article |

    Quantification of climate warming in California using machine learning shows increased daily wildfire growth risk by 25%, with an expected increase of 59% and 172% in 2100, for low- and very-high-emissions scenarios, respectively.

    • Patrick T. Brown
    • , Holt Hanley
    •  & Craig B. Clements

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Deep learning using a convolutional neural network trained with daily precipitation fields and annual global mean surface air temperature data demonstrates that anthropogenically induced climate change has a detectable effect on daily hydrological fluctuations.

    • Yoo-Geun Ham
    • , Jeong-Hwan Kim
    •  & Malte F. Stuecker

  • Article |

    Analysis of sea-level pressure measurements shows that, in agreement with the latest suite of climate models, the Hadley circulation has considerably weakened in the Northern Hemisphere over recent decades, driven by anthropogenic emissions.

    • Rei Chemke
    •  & Janni Yuval

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A simple model describes the stochastic process of dynamic sea ice thickening, shows how reduced residence time affects changes in ice thickness and highlights the enduring impact of climate change on the Arctic Ocean.

    • Hiroshi Sumata
    • , Laura de Steur
    •  & Sebastian Gerland

  • Article |

    Analysis of tide gauge observations shows that, in contrast to the current assumption of stationary storm surge extremes in Europe, the surge contribution to changes in extreme sea levels since 1960 is similar to that of sea-level rise, influencing future coastal planning.

    • Francisco M. Calafat
    • , Thomas Wahl
    •  & Sarah N. Sparrow

  • Article |

    Observed global-mean sea-level rise since 1900 is reconciled with estimates based on the contributing processes, revealing budget closure within uncertainties and showing ice-mass loss from glaciers as a dominant contributor.

    • Thomas Frederikse
    • , Felix Landerer
    •  & Yun-Hao Wu

  • Article |

    Isotopic evidence from ice cores indicates that preindustrial-era geological methane emissions were lower than previously thought, suggesting that present-day emissions of methane from fossil fuels are underestimated.

    • Benjamin Hmiel
    • , V. V. Petrenko
    •  & E. Dlugokencky

  • Article |

    Multiple observational datasets and reconstructions using data from tree rings confirm that human activities were probably affecting the worldwide risk of droughts as early as at the beginning of the twentieth century.

    • Kate Marvel
    • , Benjamin I. Cook
    •  & A. Park Williams

  • Letter |

    Vertical motions of Earth’s crust had the greatest effect on regional spatial differences in relative sea-level trends along the eastern coast of the USA during 1900–2017, explaining most of the large-scale spatial variance in regional rates of sea-level rise.

    • Christopher G. Piecuch
    • , Peter Huybers
    •  & Martin P. Tingley

  • Article |

    Climate model simulations reveal that recent destructive tropical cyclones would have been equally intense in terms of wind speed but would have produced less rainfall if these events had occurred in pre-industrial climates, and in future climates they would have greater wind speeds and rainfall.

    • Christina M. Patricola
    •  & Michael F. Wehner

  • Analysis |

    Apparently contradictory conclusions regarding the ‘global warming hiatus’ are reconciled, strengthening the current scientific understanding that long-term global warming is extremely likely to be of anthropogenic origin.

    • Iselin Medhaug
    • , Martin B. Stolpe
    •  & Reto Knutti

  • Letter |

    Satellite records show that the global pattern of cloud changes between the 1980s and the 2000s are similar to the patterns predicted by models of climate with recent external radiative forcing, and that the primary drivers of the cloud changes appear to be increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and a recovery from volcanic radiative cooling.

    • Joel R. Norris
    • , Robert J. Allen
    •  & Stephen A. Klein

  • Letter |

    This study identifies statistically significant trends in mid-atmospheric circulation patterns that partially explain observed changes in extreme temperature occurrence over Eurasia and North America; although the underlying cause of circulation pattern trends remains uncertain, most extreme temperature trends are shown to be consistent with thermodynamic warming.

    • Daniel E. Horton
    • , Nathaniel C. Johnson
    •  & Noah S. Diffenbaugh

  • Letter |

    Empirical evidence for the effect of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels on Earth’s surface energy balance is presented: the increase in surface radiative forcing from 2000 to 2010 measured at two sites is directly attributable to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over that decade and agrees with model results.

    • D. R. Feldman
    • , W. D. Collins
    •  & T. R. Shippert

  • Letter |

    Warming of the north and tropical Atlantic Ocean, which is associated in part with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (a leading mode of sea surface temperature variability), is shown to affect sea-level pressure in the Amundsen Sea, explaining the accelerated warming of and sea-ice redistribution around the Antarctic Peninsula.

    • Xichen Li
    • , David M. Holland
    •  & Changhyun Yoo

  • Letter |

    Global warming has stalled since the late 1990s, puzzling researchers; here a climate model that includes observed sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific reproduces the hiatus as part of natural variation, suggesting that long-term global warming is likely to continue.

    • Yu Kosaka
    •  & Shang-Ping Xie

  • Letter |

    Palaeoproxy evidence shows that the sea-surface-temperature gradient across the tropical Pacific Ocean strengthened during the Medieval Warm Period but weakens in model-projected future warming; this is because solar radiation induces greater precipitation for the same temperature change than greenhouse gases.

    • Jian Liu
    • , Bin Wang
    •  & June-Yi Lee

  • Editorial |

    Better models are needed before exceptional events can be reliably linked to global warming.

  • News |

    The soaring cost of natural catastrophes is due more to socio-economic than climatic factors.

    • Quirin Schiermeier

  • Letter |

    Droughts of tens of years are known to have occurred in the southwestern United States over the past two millennia, but model simulations suggest that much longer 'megadroughts' might occur in a future, warmer climate. So far, the presence of such droughts in the palaeoclimatic record has been unclear. Now, a lake sediment core from northern New Mexico is analysed, showing that millennial-scale megadroughts were a regular feature of Pleistocene interglacials. The results suggest that, in the absence of anthropogenic warming, the southwestern United States would probably be entering a cool and wet phase.

    • Peter J. Fawcett
    • , Josef P. Werne
    •  & Craig D. Allen

  • Letter |

    A significant effect of anthropogenic activities has already been detected in observed trends in temperature and mean precipitation. But so far, no study has formally identified such a human fingerprint on extreme precipitation — an increase in which is one of the central theoretical expectations for a warming climate. This study compares observations and simulations and detects a statistically significant effect of increased greenhouse gases on observed increases in extreme precipitation events over much of the Northern Hemisphere land area.

    • Seung-Ki Min
    • , Xuebin Zhang
    •  & Gabriele C. Hegerl

  • Letter |

    Human emissions of greenhouse gasses — and related warming — have been shown to be an influence on global and regional warming and on broad-scale precipitation changes. But so far, assessing the human imprint on specific weather events has proven difficult. Now, publicly contributed climate simulations are used to show that increased greenhouse gas emissions substantially increased the risk of flood occurrence during the catastrophic 2000 England and Wales floods.

    • Pardeep Pall
    • , Tolu Aina
    •  & Myles R. Allen

  • Authors |

    Wealth of data cuts uncertainty in climate-warming predictions.

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