Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Donat, Markus G.
• Alexander, Lisa V.

Titel

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

Ist Teil von

• Geophysical research letters, 2012-07, Vol.39 (14), p.n/a

Ort / Verlag

Washington, DC: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Quelle

Wiley-Blackwell Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Using a global observational dataset of daily gridded maximum and minimum temperatures we investigate changes in the respective probability density functions of both variables using two 30‐year periods; 1951–1980 and 1981–2010. The results indicate that the distributions of both daily maximum and minimum temperatures have significantly shifted towards higher values in the latter period compared to the earlier period in almost all regions, whereas changes in variance are spatially heterogeneous and mostly less significant. However asymmetry appears to have decreased but is altered in such a way that it has become skewed towards the hotter part of the distribution. Changes are greater for daily minimum (night‐time) temperatures than for daily maximum (daytime) temperatures. As expected, these changes have had the greatest impact on the extremes of the distribution and we conclude that the distribution of global daily temperatures has indeed become “more extreme” since the middle of the 20th century. Key Points Recent observed warming is investigated using global PDFs PDFs systematically shift and skew towards the hotter part of the distribution In most regions extreme temperatures increased more than mean temperatures