ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-12-5391-2012 Enhanced cold-season warming in semi-arid regions Huang J. 1 Guan X. 1 Ji F. 1 Key Laboratory for Semi-Arid Climate Change of the Ministry of Education, College of Atmospheric Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China 22 06 2012 12 12 5391 5398 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/5391/2012/acp-12-5391-2012.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/5391/2012/acp-12-5391-2012.pdf

This study examined surface air temperature trends over global land from 1901–2009. It is found that the warming trend was particularly enhanced, in the boreal cold season (November to March) over semi-arid regions (with precipitation of 200–600 mm yr<sup>−1</sup>) showing a temperature increase of 1.53 °C as compared to the global annual mean temperature increase of 1.13 °C over land. In mid-latitude semi-arid areas of Europe, Asia, and North America, temperatures in the cold season increased by 1.41, 2.42, and 1.5 °C, respectively. The semi-arid regions contribute 44.46% to global annual-mean land-surface temperature trend. The mid-latitude semi-arid regions in the Northern Hemisphere contribute by 27.0% of the total, with the mid-latitude semi-arid areas in Europe, Asia, and North America accounting for 6.29%, 13.81%, and 6.85%, respectively. Such enhanced semi-arid warming (ESAW) imply drier and warmer trend of these regions.

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