Abstract
Despite many studies on reconstructing the climate changes over the last millennium in China, the cause of the China’s climate change remains unclear. We used the UVic Earth System Climate Model (UVic Model), an Earth system model of intermediate complexity, to investigate the contributions of climate forcings (e.g. solar insolation variability, anomalous volcanic aerosols, greenhouse gas, solar orbital change, land cover changes, and anthropogenic sulfate aerosols) to surface air temperature over East China in the past millennium. The simulation of the UVic Model could reproduce the three main characteristic periods (e.g. the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), the Little Ice Age (LIA), and the 20th Century Warming Period (20CWP)) of the northern hemisphere and East China, which were consistent with the corresponding reconstructed air temperatures at century scales. The simulation result reflected that the air temperature anomalies of East China were larger than those of the global air temperature during the MWP and the first half of 20CWP and were lower than those during the LIA. The surface air temperature of East China over the past millennium has been divided into three periods in the MWP, four in the LIA, and one in the 20CWP. The MWP of East China was caused primarily by solar insolation and secondarily by volcanic aerosols. The variation of the LIA was dominated by the individual sizes of the contribution of solar insolation variability, greenhouse gas, and volcano aerosols. Greenhouse gas and volcano aerosols were the main forcings of the third and fourth periods of the LIA, respectively. We examined the nonlinear responses among the natural and anthropogenic forcings in terms of surface air temperature over East China. The nonlinear responses between the solar orbit change and anomalous volcano aerosols and those between the greenhouse gases and land cover change (or anthropogenic sulfate aerosols) all contributed approximately 0.2°C by the end of 20th century. However, the output of the energy-moisture balance atmospheric model from UVic showed no obvious nonlinear responses between anthropogenic and natural forcings. The nonlinear responses among all the climate forcings (both anthropogenic and natural forcings) contributed to a temperature increase of approximately 0.27°C at the end of the 20th century, accounting for approximately half of the warming during this period; the remainder was due to the climate forcings themselves.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
IPCC. The Physical Science Basis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 996
Zhou T, Man W M, Zhang J. Progress in numerical simulations of the climate over the last millennium (in Chinese). Adv Earth Sci, 2009, 24: 469–476
Mann M E, Bradley R S, Hughes M K. Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries. Nature, 1998, 392: 779–782
Mann M E, Bradley R S, Hughes M K. Northern Hemi sphere temperatures during the past millennium: inferences, uncertainties and limitations. Geophys Res Letts, 1999, 26: 759–762
Soon W, Baliunas S, Idso C. Reconstructing climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years: Reappraisal. Energy Environ, 2003, 4: 233–296
Jones P D, Mann M E. Climate over the past millennia. Rev Geophys, 2004, 42: RG2002
Mann M E, Jones P D. Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia. Geophys Res Lett, 2003, 30: 1820
Mann M E, Zhang Z, Hughes M K, et al. Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 2008, 105, doi:10. 1073/pnas.0805721105
Wang S W, Luo Y, Zhao Z C, et al. Debate still continues about temperature changes during the last millennium (in Chinese). Adv Clim Change Res, 2005, 2: 72–75
Wang S W, Xie Z H, Cai J N, et al. Study of the global mean temperature variation during the last millennium. Prog Nat Sci, 2002, 12: 1145–1149
Wang S W, Wen X Y, Luo Y, et al. Reconstruction of temperature series in China during the last millennium. Chin Sci Bull, 2007, 52: 958–964
Yang B, Braeuning A, Johnson K R, et al. General characteristics of temperature variation in China during the last two millennia. Geophys Res Lett, 2002, doi: 10.1029/2001GL014485
Ge Q J, Zheng X, Fang X Q, et al. Winter half-year temperature reconstruction for the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and Yangtze River, China, during the past 2000 years. Holocene, 2003, 13: 933–940
Tan M, Liu T S, Hou J, et al. Cyclic rapid warming on centennial-scale revealed by a 2650-year stalagmite record of warm season temperature. Geophys Res Lett, 2003, 1617, doi: 10.1029/2003GL017352
Shao X M, Huang L, Liu H B, et al. Reconstruction of precipitation variation from tree rings in recent 1000 years in Delingha, Qinghai. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci, 2004, 34: 939–949
Yao T D, Yang Z H, Huang C L, et al. A continuous climatic and environmental records during recent 2 ka: Preliminary study of Guliya ice core in recent 2000 years. Chin Sci Bull, 1996, 41: 1103–1106
Wang S W, Luo Y, Wen X Y, et al. Latest advances in studies of the global temperature variations for the last millennium (in Chinese). Adv Clim Change Res, 2007, 3: 14–19
Chu Z Y, Ren G Y. An overview of the research on temperature variability of the last 1000 years (in Chinese). Clim Environ Res, 2005, 10: 818–825
Zheng J Y, Wang S W. Assessment on climate change in China for the last 2000 years (in Chinese). Acta Geogr Sin, 2005, 60: 21–31
Liu J, Storch H V, Chen X, et al. Long-time modeling experiment on global climate change for the last millennium (in Chinese). Adv Earth Sci, 2005, 20: 561–567
Liu J, Storch H V, Chen X, et al. Simulated and reconstructed winter temperature in the eastern China during the last millennium. Chin Sci Bull, 2005, 50: 2251–2255
Zhang J, Zhou T J, Man W M, et al. The transient simulation of little ice age by LASG/IAP climate system model FGOALS_gl (in Chinese). Quat Sci, 2009, 29: 1125–1134
Man W M, Zhou T J, Zhang J, et al. The equilibrium response of LASG/IAP climate system model to prescribed external forcing during the little ice age (in Chinese). J Atmos Sci, 2010, 34: 914–924
Zhou T, Yu R. Twentieth century surface air temperature over China and the globe simulated by coupled climate models. J Clim, 2006, 19: 5843–5858
Zhang R, Li L, Guo Q C, et al. The development and application of climate model in paleoclimate simulation (in Chinese). Arid Zone Res, 2007, 24: 704–711
Weaver A J, Eby M, Wiebe E C, et al. The UVic Earth System Climate Model: Model description, climatology, and applications to past, present and future climates. Atmos-Ocean, 2001, 39: 1–68
Matthews H D, Weaver A J, Meissner K J, et al. Natural and anthropogenic climate change: Incorporating historical land cover change, vegetation dynamics and the global carbon cycle. Clim Dyn, 2004, 22: 461–479
Meissner K J, Eby M, Weaver A J, et al. CO2 threshold for millennial-scale oscillations in the climate system: implications for global warming scenarios. Clim Dyn, 2008, 30: 161–174
Rennermalm A K, Wood E F, Weaver A J, et al. Relative sensitivity of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation to river discharge into Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean. J Geophys Res, 2007, 112: G04S48
Bard E, Raisbeck G, Yiou F, et al. Solar irradiance during the last 1200 years based on cosmogenic nuclides. Tellus B, 2000, 52: 985–992
Krivova N A, Balmaceda L, Solanki S K. Reconstruction of solar total irradiance since 1700 from the surface magnetic flux. Astron Astrophys, 2007, 467: 335–346
Crowley J T. Causes of climate change over the past 1000 years. Science, 2000, 289: 270–277
Sato M, Hansen J E, McCormick M P, et al. Stratospheric aerosol optical depths, 1850–1990. J. Geophys Res, 1993, 98: 22987–22994
Indermühle A, Monnin E, Stauffer B, et al. Atmospheric CO2 concentration from 60 to 20 Ka BP from the Taylor Dome Ice Core, Antarctica. Geophys Res Lett, 2000, 27: 735–738
Bauer E, Claussen M, Brovkin V, et al. Assessing climate forcings of the Earth system for the past millennium. Geophys Res Lett, 2003, 30: 1276
Chen W Y. Fluctuation in Northern Hemisphere 700 mb height field associated with Southern Oscillation. Mon Weather Rev, 1982, 110: 808–832
Crowley T J, Lowery T S. How warm was the medieval warm period? Ambio, 2000, 29: 51–54
Mann M E, Zhang Z, Rutherford S, et al. Global signatures and dynamical origins of the Little Ice Age and medieval climate anomaly. Science, 2009, 326: 1260
Wang S W, Luo Y, Zhao Z C, et al. Debate about climate warming. Prog Nat Sci, 2005, 15: 917–622
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Xiao, D., Zhou, X. & Zhao, P. Numerical simulation study of temperature change over East China in the past millennium. Sci. China Earth Sci. 55, 1504–1517 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-012-4422-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-012-4422-3