Correlation of Regional Warming with Global Emissions

Abstract

A study of regional temperature reconstructions of the instrumental record 1850-2016 for five global regions is presented. No evidence is found to relate warming of sea surface temperature (SST) in either hemisphere to global emissions. The rate of warming over land in the Northern Hemisphere appears to show some evidence of correlation with global emissions in five of the twelve calendar months but the statistical significance of the correlation could not be verified with station data from the region. No correlation with emissions could be found in regional temperature reconstructions for land in the Southern Hemisphere or for combined land and ocean in either hemisphere. These results taken together do not support the claim that the observed warming in surface temperatures worldwide since the Industrial Revolution is driven by fossil fuel emissions or that observed changes in tropical cyclone characteristics due to rising SST are anthropogenic.

Keywords: global warming, climate change, fossil fuel emissions, detrended correlation analysis, detrended fluctuation analysis, AGW, anthropogenic global warming, warming driven by emissions, SST, tropical cyclone, hurricane