Global Surface Air Temperature Variations During the Twentieth Century: Part 1,Spatial,Temporal and Seasonal Details

This paper is an up-to-date review of instrumentally-recorded, seasonal, surface temperature change across the land and marine regions of the world during the twentieth century. This is the first part of a two part series. The second part will deal with the interpretation of proxy-climate data in terms of large-scale hemispheric or global-scale temperature averages for the Holocene.

In Part 1, we review the uncertainties associated with combining land and marine instrumental records to produce regional-average series. The surface air temperature of the world has warmed 0.5°C since the middle of the nineteenth century. The warming in the Northern Hemisphere only occurred in winter, spring and autumn. Summers are now no warmer than in the 1860s and 1870s. The same half-degree warming is seen in all seasons in the Southern Hemisphere.

Spatial patterns of temperature anomalies during two warm decades, the 1930s and 1980s, all vary from season to season. Temperatures during the 1980s were by far the warmest in the last 140 years. Though most areas of the world experienced above normal temperatures, the variability from season to season was notable in the Northern Hemisphere where much of the warmth was in winter and spring over northern and central Asia and northwestern North America. Almost all of the Southern Hemisphere was warmer during these years.