According to a recent research by the US government, global warming never underwent a ‘hiatus’ or ‘pause’. This finding of the study directly debunks a key argument used by the skeptics for questioning climate science.
During the new study, researchers reassessed the temperature records of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s). Adjustments made to the data were pretty minor; however, the reassessment forced the US research team to flatten the graph that allowed climate skeptics to claim that there was a pause in the increase in global temperatures.
The study’s lead author Dr. Tom Karl said that neither there has been nay slowdown in global warming nor there has been any hiatus. Karl is the director of the National Climatic Data Center at NOAA.
Climatologist Dr. Gavin Schmidt, who also happens to be the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies of NASA, said that the fact that even tiny modifications made to the interpretation results in changes in the final conclusion about whether there was a hiatus or not is enough to comprehend how flimsy the concept was.
The entire study can be read in the June 4 edition of the journal Science. According to the study, the rate of global warming remained almost the same during the last 15 years; rather, it can be said that during this phase the rate increased slightly compared to the last five decades. While, the rate of global warming was 0.116 C per decade during the last 15 years, it was 0.113 C per decade during the previous five decades.
In 2013, a report by the UN suggested that since 1998 our planet has experienced much less increase in temperature than the previous five decades.
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Karl informed that a lot of efforts have been put in for comprehending the alleged hiatus and the whereabouts of the missing heat. Since then, several studies have succeeded in identifying factors causing the loss of heat; examples of such factors include small volcanic eruptions, transfer of heat into deep oceans, etc.; according to those studies, these factors had a strong impact on the temperature at the Earth’s surface.
Karl said that the suggestions made by those studies are quite correct as if those factors were not there the rate of global warming would have been much higher than what he and his team have reported.
