Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change.
Significant changes in physical and biological systems are occurring on all continents and in most oceans, with a concentration of available data in Europe and North America. Most of these changes are in the direction expected with warming temperature. Here we show that these changes in natural systems since at least 1970 are occurring in regions of observed temperature increases, and that these temperature increases at continental scales cannot be explained by natural climate variations alone. Given the conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely to be due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, and furthermore that it is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent except Antarctica, we conclude that anthropogenic climate change is having a significant impact on physical and biological systems globally and in some continents.
Rosenzweig
Cynthia
C
NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia Center for Climate Systems Research, 2800 Broadway, New York, New York 10025, USA. crosenzweig@giss.nasa.gov
Karoly
David
D
Vicarelli
Marta
M
Neofotis
Peter
P
Wu
Qigang
Q
Casassa
Gino
G
Menzel
Annette
A
Root
Terry L
TL
Estrella
Nicole
N
Seguin
Bernard
B
Tryjanowski
Piotr
P
Liu
Chunzhen
C
Rawlins
Samuel
S
Imeson
Anton
A
D000383:Agriculture; D016208:Databases, Factual; D017753:Ecosystem; D016468:Forestry; D005843:Geography; D017752:Greenhouse Effect; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006802:Human Activities; D007053:Ice; D038622:Internationality; D008386:Marine Biology; D015233:Models, Statistical; D013696:Temperature
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