Global Warming is not Uniform: Scientists Discover Climate Cooling Occurred

Temperatures are rising across the globe. Yet how fast they increase largely depends on location. Now, scientists have taken the first detailed look at global land surface warming trends over the last 100 years, shedding a little light on what types of warming we might see in the future.

Previous work actually failed at providing information of non-uniform warming in space and time due to limitations of previous analysis methods in climate research. In this case, though, the researchers used a newly developed analysis method and examined land surface temperature trends from 1900 onward for the entire globe with the exception of Antarctica.

So what did they find? It turns out that there was noticeable warming that first started around the regions circling the Arctic and subtropical regions in both hemispheres. The largest accumulated warming to date, though, is actually at the northern midlatitudes. In addition, some areas of the world experienced cooling.

"The global warming is not uniform," said Eric Chassignet, one of the researchers, in a news release. "You have areas that have cooled and areas that have warmed."

For example, while most to the global warmed up from about 1910 to 1980, there were some regions south of the equator that actually cooled down and then had no change at all until the mid-1990s. In addition, other areas near and south of the equator didn't see significant changes when compared to the rest of the world.

The new findings reveal a bit more about how global warming has impacted different locations across the globe. More specifically, they show how while some locations saw uniform warming, others actually cooled. Understanding how these temperatures fluctuate is important for better understanding the future of climate change. It will also provide a greater context to global warming research overall.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.