干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Western China (WC) is located in the arid and semi-arid belt of the mid-latitudes. Understanding the causes of the large temperature increases experienced in this region is of great importance because both the fragile ecological environment and the human societies in WC are highly vulnerable to changes in climate. We conducted a detection and attribution analysis on the annual mean temperature using an optimal fingerprinting method by comparing observations based on homogenized station data with simulations conducted using the models that participated in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). The results show that the increase in the mean temperature can be attributed to human activities. The effect of anthropogenic (ANT) forcing can be detected in single-signal detection analyses when the response to the ANT forcing is compared directly with the observations. This effect can also be separated from the influence of the natural external forcing in two-signal analyses. The warming attributable to the ANT forcing explains most of the observed regional warming. The models appear to have underestimated the observed warming, suggesting that the projected future temperature increases based on raw output from the model simulations may have also been underestimated.