The latest round in an ongoing debate over global-warming trends claims that warming has indeed slowed down this century.
An obvious slowing in the rise of global temperatures was recorded at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
This was referred to as a "hiatus" or a "pause". This hiatus was first observed several years ago. Climate-change skeptics have used this as evidence that global warming has stopped permanently.
But in June the previous year, a study in science claimed that the hiatus was just an artifact which disappears when biases in temperature data are corrected.
Now a prominent group of researchers is countering that claim. They argue in Nature Climate Change that even after correcting these biases the slowdown was real.
"There is this mismatch between what the climate models are producing and what the observations are showing," says lead author John Fyfe. "We can't ignore it." Fyfe uses the term "slowdown" rather than "hiatus". He also stresses that it does not in any way weaken global-warming theory.
The study that questioned the existence of the slowdown corrected known biases in the surface temperature record maintained by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
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The finding showed differences in temperature readings from ships and buoys. This effectively increased the record about warming. The researchers also extended the record to include 2014. This set a new record high for average temperatures.
Thomas Karl, director of National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, calculated the rate of global warming between 1950 and 1999 as being 0.113°C per decade.
This was similar to the 0.116°C a decade calculated for 2000-14. This, Karl said, meant that an assessment done by the influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2013 showing that warming had slowed was no longer valid.
(Diadaptasi dari www.nature.com)