Change in mean temperature as a predictor of extreme temperature change in the Asia–Pacific region

Abstract

Trends (1961Trends ( -2003 in daily maximum and minimum temperatures, extremes and variance were found to be spatially coherent across the Asia-Pacific region. The majority of stations exhibited significant trends: increases in mean maximum and mean minimum temperature, decreases in cold nights and cool days, and increases in warm nights. No station showed a significant increase in cold days or cold nights, but a few sites showed significant decreases in hot days and warm nights. Significant decreases were observed in both maximum and minimum temperature standard deviation in China, Korea and some stations in Japan (probably reflecting urbanization effects), but also for some Thailand and coastal Australian sites. The South Pacific convergence zone (SPCZ) region between Fiji and the Solomon Islands showed a significant increase in maximum temperature variability.Correlations between mean temperature and the frequency of extreme temperatures were strongest in the tropical Pacific Ocean from French Polynesia to Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and southern Japan. Correlations were weaker at continental or higher latitude locations, which may partly reflect urbanization.For non-urban stations, the dominant distribution change for both maximum and minimum temperature involved a change in the mean, impacting on one or both extremes, with no change in standard deviation. This occurred from French Polynesia to Papua New Guinea (except for maximum temperature changes near the SPCZ), in Malaysia, the Philippines, and several outlying Japanese islands. For urbanized stations the dominant change was a change in the mean and variance, impacting on one or both extremes. This result was particularly evident for minimum temperature.The results presented here, for non-urban tropical and maritime locations in the Asia-Pacific region, support the hypothesis that changes in mean temperature may be used to predict changes in extreme temperatures. At urbanized or higher latitude locations, changes in variance should be incorporated.

Impact of altitude and latitude on changes in temperature extremes over South Asia during 1971–2000

“…Klein Tank et al, (2006) used 116 stations located in central and southern Asia to show warming in both the cold and warm tails of the distributions of daily minimum and maximum temperature between 1961 and 2000. Using 91 stations from southeast Asia and the south Pacific, Manton et al, (2001) found significant increases in the annual number of hot days and warm nights, and decreases in cold days and cold nights over 1961-1998. Griffiths et al, (2005 reported similar results for 89 stations across the Asia-Pacific region during 1961-2003. More recently, analyses of changes in climate extremes across South Asia have been described by Sheikh et al, (2010).…”

Towards predictive understanding of regional climate change

“…Changes in temperature extremes often scale with changes in the mean 54,55 , indicating local temperature variance has changed little throughout the globe 56 . However, variance in individual climate realizations may change under continued global warming, altering tails of probability distributions and frequencies of extreme events.…”

The shifting probability distribution of global daytime and night‐time temperatures

“…Previous observations-based studies have shown warming trends in both average temperatures [e.g., Vose et al, 2005aVose et al, , 2005bLawrimore et al, 2011] and temperature extremes . However, there is conflicting evidence -mostly based on regional analysis -as to whether the response in extremes is simply a result of a shifting mean [e.g., Griffiths et al, 2005;Simolo et al, 2011] or whether changes in other "higher order moments" of the daily temperature are also occurring [Della-Marta et al, 2007;Ballester et al, 2010]. Assessment of the probability distribution of daily temperatures for the globe would help address this question.…”