It is striking to what extent they resemble
the spatial pattern seen in the AR4 ensemble free - running version rather than the initiallised forecast, though there are also some correlations there too (for instance, west of the Antarctic peninsula, related to the ozone - hole and GHG related increase in the Southern Annular Mode).
Not exact matches
Those games depend primarily on a person's ability to recognize
spatial patterns — for example, you know an elliptical galaxy when you
see one.
One clue you can
see directly that these two events are not the same is the
spatial pattern of temperature changes — they are significantly more uniform in the later period.
This is true both with respect to hemispheric - mean temperature changes and
spatial patterns of climate change (
see our previous discussions of this precise point here (
see 4th paragraph and figure 2), here (
see 8th paragraph), and here (
see final paragraph).
See e.g. this review paper (Schmidt et al, 2004), where the response of a climate model to estimated past changes in natural forcing due to solar irradiance variations and explosive volcanic eruptions, is shown to match the
spatial pattern of reconstructed temperature changes during the «Little Ice Age» (which includes enhanced cooling in certain regions such as Europe).
By investigating changes in the food web, particularly foraging and
spatial patterns of seal populations, we can compare with historic samples and changes
seen in the West Antarctic.
However, the
spatial pattern of the PDO includes warming in some places and cooling in others; in fact, changes consistent with the PDO can be
seen in the geographic
pattern of observed ocean heat content changes.
For example, while El Niño or El Niño - like decadal variability results in unusually warm annual temperatures, the
spatial pattern associated with such a warming is more structured, with cooling in the North Pacific and South Pacific (
see, e.g., Zhang et al., 1997).
The most distinct
spatial patterns of fishing effort can be
seen to result from differences in regulation.
I have
seen two
spatial pattern claims about GHG warming, 1) the troposphere should warm more quickly, and 2) the poles should warm more quickly.
Matt Skaggs writes: «I have
seen two
spatial pattern claims about GHG warming, 1) the troposphere should warm more quickly, and 2) the poles should warm more quickly... I was unable to find a single instance where any of the feedbacks thought to enhance warming in specific locations were associated solely with CO2... I can not make the dots connect.»
«The U.S. has
seen a 20 percent increase in oil and gas production and a nine-fold increase in shale gas production from 2002 to 2014, but the
spatial pattern of the methane increase
seen by GOSAT does not clearly point to these sources.
We are using all the GCM runs currently available, evaluating every combination numerically possible (2 ^ 55) alongside the socioeconomic and circulation index data I had previously assembled, to
see what variables really explain the
spatial trend
pattern.
Pattern correlation - based detection studies account for spatial auto - correlation implicitly by comparing the observed pattern correlation with values that are realised in long control simulations (see Wigley et al.,
Pattern correlation - based detection studies account for
spatial auto - correlation implicitly by comparing the observed
pattern correlation with values that are realised in long control simulations (see Wigley et al.,
pattern correlation with values that are realised in long control simulations (
see Wigley et al., 2000).