Towards annual updating of forced warming to date and constrained climate projections
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
In the context of rapid human-caused climate change, regular updates of the state of knowledge of current and future climate are needed. New statistical methods using observational constraints underpinned estimates of present-day human-induced warming and projected future warming in the most recent IPCC report. As time goes by, and new updated observational records become available, how should estimates of the current and projected human-caused climate change be updated? Here, we use a perfect model framework and show that incorporating observations from every new year in observationally constrained projections improves their accuracy, without causing major year-to-year spurious variability on outcomes. The forced warming estimated for the current year also exhibits high enough stability to be considered as a robust indicator of the state of the climate system.
Date Issued
2025-10-17
Date Acceptance
2025-08-07
Citation
Nature Communications, 2025, 16
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
16
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/41107241
PII: 10.1038/s41467-025-63026-9
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Article Number
9214
Date Publish Online
2025-10-17