From local perception to global perspective

Lehner, Flavio; Stocker, Thomas F. (2015). From local perception to global perspective. Nature climate change, 5(8), pp. 731-734. Nature Publishing Group 10.1038/nclimate2660

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Recent sociological studies show that over short time periods the large day-to-day, month-to-month or year-to-year variations in weather at a specific location can influence and potentially bias our perception of climate change, a more long-term and global phenomenon. By weighting local temperature anomalies with the number of people that experience them and considering longer time periods, we illustrate that the share of the world population exposed to warmer-than-normal temperatures has steadily increased during the past few decades. Therefore, warming is experienced by an increasing number of individuals, counter to what might be simply inferred from global mean temperature anomalies. This behaviour is well-captured by current climate models, offering an opportunity to increase confidence in future projections of climate change irrespective of the personal local perception of weather.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute > Climate and Environmental Physics
10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)

UniBE Contributor:

Lehner, Flavio, Stocker, Thomas

Subjects:

500 Science > 530 Physics

ISSN:

1758-678X

Publisher:

Nature Publishing Group

Language:

English

Submitter:

Doris Rätz

Date Deposited:

14 Sep 2015 10:14

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:49

Publisher DOI:

10.1038/nclimate2660

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.71459

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/71459

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