Weather whiplash: Trends in rapid temperature changes in a warming climate

• Published in: International Journal of Climatology
• Main Author: Lee, Cameron C.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2021
• Subjects: Arctic; Southern Ocean; Arctic Ocean; Canada; Greenland; Pacific; Climate change; Iceland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/joc.7458; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/joc.7458; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1002/joc.7458; https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/joc.7458

Abstract Both research and media attention has shown an increasing interest in rapidly changing weather, colloquially termed “weather whiplash” events. This research examines the spatial and seasonal variability of trends in seasonally standardized short‐term temperature ranges across the globe. Trends are calculated for three different “range windows”: 7‐day ranges, 1‐day departure, and diurnal (24‐hr) temperature ranges. Results show that globally, over the 70‐year period of record 7‐ and 1‐day ranges are increasing substantially in all seasons, while diurnal trends are only changing (decreasing) significantly in boreal autumn. Since 1985, however, ranges at all three time windows have increased significantly. The most widespread changes are occurring as significant increases in these ranges in the Southern Ocean, Africa, and South America and in regions of coastal upwelling. Significant decreases in these ranges are noted mostly at the Arctic Ocean confluence with the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, especially in the Greenland, Iceland, and Norwegian Seas, and more recently, in northeastern Canada. Oceanic trends appear driven by changes in wind speeds, especially in the Southern Hemisphere where increasing open‐ocean winds are nearly ubiquitous. Trends in temperature variability over land are largely inverse of the long‐term changes in cloud cover. This research adds to a growing body of climate change literature examining temperature variability trends, and it represents the first examination of full 70‐year trends of many variables contained in the recently released ERA5 reanalysis.