• Attribution of seasonal temperature changes in Sri Lanka to anthropogenic and natural forcings using CMIP5 simulations

• # Fulltext

https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/jess/130/0105

• # Keywords

Climate change; trend detection; attribution; CMIP5; fingerprint; temperature.

• # Abstract

The human–environment interactions are entwined across different spatio-temporal scales. The prime focus of this study is to investigate the wide range of changes happening in seasonal maximum and minimum temperatures (T$_{max}$ and T $_{min}$ ) during 1950–2012 over the island country Sri Lanka in the deep tropics and to analyse associated important drivers explaining these changes. Fingerprint-based detection and attribution (D&A) analysis formally decipher the rudimentary causes of climate change by investigating the extent to which pattern of response to anthropogenic forcing (i.e., fingerprints) from climate model simulations explains the observed changes. Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase-5 experiment simulations are utilized to perform fingerprint-based D&A analysis for the first time in Sri Lanka. The PiControl experiment simulations which include only natural internal variability of climate could not explain the observed changes in seasonal T$_{max}$ and T$_{min}$ . However, the unequivocal attribution to human‐induced climate change (historical GHG and historical experiment simulations) was not possible in most of the cases except a few. Even though climate change impact is prominent in extra-tropics, an unusual human-induced climate change signature in deep-tropics is manifested in the present study.

$\bf{Highlights}$

$\bullet$ Fingerprint-based formal detection and attribution approach is utilized

$\bullet$ Observed temperature changes are not due to natural internal climate variability

$\bullet$ Climate change impact is prominent in deep-tropics

$\bullet$ Change in temperature is significant over whole of Sri Lanka

$\bullet$ Large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns have a strong influence on hydroclimatology of Sri Lanka

• # Author Affiliations

1. Divecha Centre for Climate Change, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru 560 012, India

• # Journal of Earth System Science

Volume 131, 2022
All articles
Continuous Article Publishing mode

• # Editorial Note on Continuous Article Publication

Posted on July 25, 2019