Global Surface Air Temperature (GloSAT)

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Surface temperature is the longest instrumental record of climate change and the measure used in the Paris Climate Agreement that aims to 'prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system'. The Agreement defines an ambition to limit global temperature change to 1.5C or 2C above pre-industrial levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used a baseline of 1850-1900 for its definition of 'pre-industrial' as this is when existing instrumental records begin. It has been estimated that global temperatures may have already increased by 0.0-0.2C by this time, but this is uncertain due to lack of data. However, even using the 1850-1900 baseline, existing temperature datasets disagree on the amount of warming to date and this disagreement implies more than 20% uncertainty in the allowed carbon budget to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement solely due to uncertainty in observed surface temperature change. These differences between temperature datasets arise mostly from two structural uncertainties: the use of sea surface temperatures (SST) rather than air temperatures over the oceans, especially ice-covered regions, and differences in data coverage and interpolation strategies. This project addresses both.To best inform decision-makers, records of temperature change must be as accurate, consistent, and long as possible. Existing global datasets start in 1850 or later, but we will extend the record by a further 70 years back to the late 18th century. Current knowledge of this period comes from instrumental measurements in Europe, palaeo-proxies (tree-rings, corals or ice cores), and climate models. We will dramatically extend the spatial coverage of the early measured record in this 70-year period, which is important for understanding natural climate variability and the climate response to different radiative forcings. For example, the longer record includes the period of 5 large volcanic eruptions and extra cycles of multi-decadal climate oscillations. The new record will allow us to better disentangle the contributions of anthropogenic and natural factors on the climate system and quantify the effect humans have already had on Earth's temperature, and hence on future climate.A major inconsistency has been past use of air temperature over land but SST over oceans. Recent advances mean we can produce a marine air temperature record to construct the first global air temperature dataset over ocean, land and ice, stretching back to the late 18th century. Our dataset will be independent from SST, currently the most uncertain component of global temperature. We will improve land, marine and cryosphere air temperature observations to make them more homogeneous and extend the global record further back in time. This requires fundamental research to better understand the bias and noise characteristics of historical observations and develop new error models. We will adopt sophisticated statistical techniques to allow the estimation of air temperature everywhere, even when there are gaps in the observations. We will expand the historical climate record with new ship's logbook and weather station digitisations focused on early data, sparse periods and regions, and the interfaces between land, ocean and ice. We will engage the public in the digitisation effort building on recent successful citizen science initiatives.We will analyse the new surface air temperature record to better understand how temperatures have changed since the late 18th century. This longer record will give a better understanding of natural climate variations, both variability internally generated within the climate system and that due to external forcing factors such as volcanic eruptions and solar changes. This improved understanding of natural variability will enable us to more cleanly isolate the characteristic "fingerprints" of man-made climate change allowing us to more confidently detect and attribute human-induced changes