It has been claimed that the early-2000s global warming slowdown or hiatus, characterized by a reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is unsupported by observations. The evidence presented here contradicts these claims.
Fyfe et al, just published at nature.com, provides further confirmation of the ‘slowdown’ or ‘hiatus’ in global warming that has been noted by such wide ranging sources as the IPCC AR5, NASA, UAH, RSS, the Met Office, and virtually every other data source on global temperature. Indeed, the much vaunted Karl et al (2015), which claims a few highly questionable ‘adjustments’ to the data (mostly modifications of the sea surface temperatures) effectively erase the ‘hiatus’ is very much an outlier on this matter in the peer reviewed literature.
Karl et al claim:
Previous analyses of global temperature trends during the first decade of the 21st century seemed to indicate that warming had stalled. This allowed critics of the idea of global warming to claim that concern about climate change was misplaced. Karl et al. now show that temperatures did not plateau as thought and that the supposed warming “hiatus” is just an artifact of earlier analyses. Warming has continued at a pace similar to that of the last half of the 20th century, and the slowdown was just an illusion.
For other papers that debunk Karl et al see Karl et al ‘Pause-buster’ Paper Debunked Again.
One might wonder why NOAA adopted the questionable and widely disputed findings of Karl et al into their global temperature data almost immediately upon release despite the heavy weight of the vast majority of the peer reviewed literature in opposition to those findings. Perhaps Thomas Karl’s position as Director of NOAA NCEI has something to do with it? Sounds more like politics than real science.
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