Nonequilibrium fluctuations of global warming

Abstract While the warming trends of the Earth’s mean temperature are evident at climatological scales, the local temperature at shorter timescales are highly fluctuating. Here we show that the probabilities of such fluctuations are characterized by a special symmetry typical of small systems out of equilibrium. Their nearly universal properties are linked to the fluctuation theorem and reveal that the progressive warming is accompanied by growing asymmetry of temperature distributions. These statistics allow us to project the global temperature variability in the near future, in line with predictions from climate models, providing original insight about future extremes.