Estimation of the climate response to changes in greenhouse gas concentration from surface air temperature observations over Russia

The climate response of surface air temperature to changes in the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration was estimated from observed data. The response of decadal averages of annual mean surface air temperature was analyzed within 50 degrees-55 degrees N over Russia from observed data and model outputs (produced by the global ocean-atmosphere climate model HadCM2 of the Hadley Center of the UK Meteorological Office). The spatial distributions of climate responses were found to be geometrically similar for various levels of changing carbon dioxide concentration. The climate response turned out to be roughly proportional to the difference between greenhouse concentrations. A comparison of the observed and simulated climate responses showed that they are somewhat similar, but have substantial differences. Unlike the simulated climate response, the observed one is more intense and the signals corresponding to different changes in the greenhouse gas concentration exhibit more similar patterns, with a smaller spread between different estimated signals. A spatial distribution of estimated climate response over the territory of Russia is given.