Work

Emergent constraints improve near-term temperature projections over China: evaluations against observations based on the preindustrial baseline

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Emergent constraints (ECs) are widely used to reduce uncertainties in climate projections, yet their reliability has rarely been evaluated against observations. We apply an established EC approach based on historical global surface air temperature trends and local residual warming trends to temperature change projections over China during 2006–2025 in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phases 5 and 6 (CMIP5/6) ensembles. Constrained projections exhibit smaller biases and reduced inter-model spreads relative to raw projections, with Taylor Scores increasing by 25.6% (8.5%), root-mean-square errors decreasing by 18.2% (18.2%), and inter-model spreads narrowing by 45.2% (52.0%) in CMIP5 (CMIP6). The improvements are more robust when referenced to 1850–1900 than to 1986–2005, associated with stronger emergent relationships and a smaller contribution of internal variability. These findings support the application of ECs to regional temperature projections and highlight the importance of baseline selection in enhancing the credibility of constrained temperature projections.

Source: Environmental Research Letters

DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb559

Authors: Wenlu Fan, Zhiping Tian, Dabang Jiang

Institutions: Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

Language: English

Topic: Climate variability and models

Subfield: Global and Planetary Change

Field: Environmental Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Climate action

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $3,045