Detection and Attribution of Human-Perceived Warming Over China

While previous studies have largely focused on anthropogenic warming characterized by surface air temperature, little is known about the behaviors of human-perceived temperature (HPT), which describe the "feels-like" equivalent temperature by considering the joint effects of temperature, humidity and/or wind speed. Here we adopted an optimal ?ngerprinting method to compare seasonal mean HPTs in China with those from simulations conducted with multiple climate models participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6. We found clear anthropogenic signals in the observational records of changes in both summer and winter HPTs over the period 1971-2020. Moreover, the anthropogenic greenhouse gas influence was robustly detected, with clear separation from natural and anthropogenic aerosol forcings. The anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing plays the dominant role (>90%) of human-perceived warming. Urbanization effects contribute slightly and moderately to the estimated trends in summer and winter HPTs, respectively, in addition to the effects of external forcing. Plain Language Summary Human influences have been identified in the observed warming quantified by surface air temperature (SAT), but SAT alone is inadequate as a metric for human thermal comfort. Here we focus on human-perceived temperature (HPT), which describes the "feels-like" equivalent temperature by considering the joint effects of temperature, humidity, and/or wind speed. We isolate anthropogenic impacts on the observed increase in summer and winter HPTs in China during 1971-2020 by comparing observations with state-of-the-art climate models. Results show that the influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas is detected, with clear separation from other external forcings such as solar and volcanic activities and anthropogenic aerosols. The human-induced greenhouse gas increases are also found to explain most (>90%) of the observed human-perceived warming. Along with the effects of large-scale anthropogenic forcing, urbanization effects also have a slight to moderate influence on the estimated trends in summer and winter HPTs. Our work is an early attempt to provide quantitative evidence for the physiological impacts of anthropogenic global warming and local urbanization on human beings.