Human Influences on Changes in the Temperature Seasonality in Mid- to High-Latitude Land Areas

Abstract The annual cycle is the largest variability for many climate variables outside the tropics. Whether human activities have affected the annual cycle at the regional scale is unclear. In this study, long-term changes in the amplitude of surface air temperature annual cycle in the observations are compared with those simulated by the climate models participating in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Different spatial domains ranging from hemispheric to subcontinental scales in mid- to high-latitude land areas for the period 1950–2005 are considered. Both the optimal fingerprinting and a nonoptimal detection and attribution technique are used. The results show that the space–time pattern of model-simulated responses to the combined effect of anthropogenic and natural forcings is consistent with the observed changes. In particular, models capture not only the decrease in the temperature seasonality in the northern high latitudes and East Asia, but also the increase in the Mediterranean region. A human influence on the weakening in the temperature seasonality in the Northern Hemisphere is detected, particularly in the high latitudes (50°–70°N) where the influence of the anthropogenic forcing can be separated from that of the natural forcing.