Damped summer warming accompanied with cloud cover increase over Eurasia from 1982 to 2009

The relationship between summer temperature, total cloud cover and precipitation over Eurasia was investigated using observation-based products of temperature and precipitation, and satellite-derived cloud cover and radiation products. We used a partial least squares regression approach to separate the local influences of cloud cover and precipitation on temperature variations. Our results suggest that the variance of summer temperature is partly explained by changes in summer cloudiness. The summer temperature dependence on cloud cover is strong at the high latitudes and in the middle latitude semi-humid area, while the dependence on precipitation is strong in the Central Asia arid area and the southern Asia humid area. During the period 1982‐2009, the damped warming in extended West Siberia was accompanied with increases in cloud cover, and the pronounced warming in Europe and Mongolia was associated with a decrease in cloud cover and precipitation. Our results suggest that cloud cover may be the important local factor influencing the summer temperature variation in Eurasia while precipitation plays an important role at the middle latitudes.

[1]  Susan Solomon,et al.  Spatial and seasonal patterns in climate change, temperatures, and precipitation across the United States , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[2]  J. Comiso,et al.  Relationship between satellite-derived land surface temperatures, arctic vegetation types, and NDVI , 2008 .

[3]  Andrew K. Heidinger,et al.  The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer Pathfinder Atmosphere (PATMOS) Climate Dataset: A Resource for Climate Research , 2003 .

[4]  K. Trenberth,et al.  Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change , 2007 .

[5]  T. D. Mitchell,et al.  An improved method of constructing a database of monthly climate observations and associated high‐resolution grids , 2005 .

[6]  P. Groisman,et al.  Ecosystems and climate interactions in the boreal zone of northern Eurasia , 2007 .

[7]  Martin Wild,et al.  On the consistency of trends in radiation and temperature records and implications for the global hydrological cycle , 2004 .

[8]  Eric J. Fetzer,et al.  Atmospheric moisture content associated with surface air temperatures over northern Eurasia , 2010 .

[9]  C. Potter,et al.  Interannual covariability in Northern Hemisphere air temperatures and greenness associated with El Niño‐Southern Oscillation and the Arctic Oscillation , 2003 .

[10]  Bin Wang,et al.  Circumglobal Teleconnection in the Northern Hemisphere Summer , 2005 .

[11]  D. Lüthi,et al.  The role of increasing temperature variability in European summer heatwaves , 2004, Nature.

[12]  R. Bradley,et al.  Temporal Changes in the Observed Relationship between Cloud Cover and Surface Air Temperature , 2000 .

[13]  C. Willmott,et al.  Uncertainties in Precipitation and Their Impacts on Runoff Estimates , 2004 .

[14]  I. Mokhov,et al.  Recent Changes in Cloud-Type Frequency and Inferred Increases in Convection over the United States and the Former USSR , 2001 .

[15]  Y. Govaerts,et al.  Cloud Variability over the Indian Monsoon Region as Observed from Satellites , 2009 .

[16]  B. Kowalski,et al.  Partial least-squares regression: a tutorial , 1986 .

[17]  Guoxiong Wu,et al.  Change of cloud amount and the climate warming on the Tibetan Plateau , 2006 .

[18]  R. Bradley,et al.  The Relationship of Cloud Cover to Near-Surface Temperature and Humidity: Comparison of GCM Simulations with Empirical Data , 2000 .

[19]  Y. Tachibana,et al.  Impact of the wintertime North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on the summertime atmospheric circulation , 2003 .

[20]  Martin Wild,et al.  Trends in aerosol radiative effects over China and Japan inferred from observed cloud cover, solar “dimming,” and solar “brightening” , 2009 .

[21]  Eric F. Wood,et al.  Comparison and evaluation of gridded radiation products across northern Eurasia , 2009 .

[22]  Jeffrey R. Key,et al.  Influence of changes in sea ice concentration and cloud cover on recent Arctic surface temperature trends , 2009 .

[23]  Wenjie Dong,et al.  Soil moisture influence on summertime surface air temperature over East Asia , 2010 .

[24]  X. Xia.  Spatiotemporal changes in sunshine duration and cloud amount as well as their relationship in China during 1954-2005 , 2010 .

[25]  L. Smith,et al.  Recent temperature and precipitation increases in West Siberia and their association with the Arctic Oscillation , 2003 .

[26]  S. Seneviratne,et al.  Land–atmosphere coupling and climate change in Europe , 2006, Nature.

[27]  P. Groisman,et al.  Cloudiness variations over the former Soviet Union , 2000 .

[28]  Alexander Ignatov,et al.  Equator crossing times for NOAA, ERS and EOS sun-synchronous satellites , 2004 .

[29]  K. Trenberth,et al.  Effects of Clouds, Soil Moisture, Precipitation, and Water Vapor on Diurnal Temperature Range , 1999 .

[30]  Jie He,et al.  Solar radiation trend across China in recent decades: a revisit with quality-controlled data , 2010 .

[31]  Y. Qian,et al.  More frequent cloud‐free sky and less surface solar radiation in China from 1955 to 2000 , 2005 .

[32]  Andi Walther,et al.  A Naive Bayesian Cloud-Detection Scheme Derived fromCALIPSOand Applied within PATMOS-x , 2012 .

[33]  Thomas M. Smith,et al.  Improvements to NOAA’s Historical Merged Land–Ocean Surface Temperature Analysis (1880–2006) , 2008 .

[34]  Igor I. Mokhov,et al.  Recent variations of cloudiness over Russia from surface daytime observations , 2011 .

[35]  Michael J. Pavolonis,et al.  Comparison of NOAA's Operational AVHRR-Derived Cloud Amount to Other Satellite-Derived Cloud Climatologies , 2004 .

[36]  Kevin E. Trenberth,et al.  Relationships between precipitation and surface temperature , 2005 .

[37]  Y. Qian,et al.  Variability of solar radiation under cloud‐free skies in China: The role of aerosols , 2007 .

[38]  W. Rossow,et al.  Advances in understanding clouds from ISCCP , 1999 .

[39]  D. Frank,et al.  Summer temperature variations in the European Alps, A.D. 755-2004 , 2006 .

[40]  A. Dai,et al.  Clouds, precipitation and temperature range , 1997, Nature.

[41]  J. Kok,et al.  The physics of wind-blown sand and dust , 2012, Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society.

[42]  Taneil Uttal,et al.  Daytime Global Cloud Typing from AVHRR and VIIRS: Algorithm Description, Validation, and Comparisons , 2005 .

[43]  J. Hansen,et al.  GLOBAL SURFACE TEMPERATURE CHANGE , 2010 .

[44]  Syukuro Manabe,et al.  Seasonal Variation of Surface Temperature Change during the Last Several Decades , 2011 .

[45]  J. Hansen,et al.  Global temperature change , 2006, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.