Observed warming in cold anticyclones

During the past half-century, we find that the observed surface warming tre nd in the northern hemisphere, averaged across grid cells that contain at l east 90 % of the total monthly data, has been 0.051 degrees C decade(-1). O n a seasonally weighted basis, a relatively small. area (12.8 %) contribute d over half of the annual warming, and in the winter 26 % of the area accou nts for 78 % of the warming. Our analysis demonstrates that this warming is almost exclusively confined to the dry, cold, anticyclones of Siberia and northwestern North America. The consequences of this type of regional warmi ng are different than those associated with other regional warming scenario s. The spatial pattern of observed warming is not coincident with that proj ected by many of the leading general circulation models, including those fe atured in the 1996 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.