Progress and Uncertainty in Studies of Contemporary Land Climate Warming Rate: From Globe to Region

Abstract

 Contemporary land surface air temperature (SAT) change rate is a key issue in studies of climate change or global change. This article reviews the research progress on global land and regional climate warming rates, with a focus on the main results and findings of our own research group in the last two decades. It also discusses uncertainties and scientific questions currently facing researchers in this field and prospects for future research directions. Global land, Asian, Chinese, and smaller regional scale studies have consistently shown significant warming of surface climate over the past century, especially over the past half century. However, there is significant uncertainty in the existing researches regarding the magnitude and rate of the warming. The biggest uncertainty comes from the urbanization bias in the observation data series, followed by the heterogeneity of data spatial coverage and its change over time, and the maximum and minimum temperature average method in calculating daily, monthly and annual mean SAT. These issues need to be further investigated in future in order to obtain more solid and reliable research conclusions.