No, global warming hasn't stopped

Michael Marshall, environment reporter

Like a game of scientific whack-a-mole, some arguments against climate change just keep bouncing back - no matter how many times researchers disprove them. One is the long-standing claim that "global warming stopped in 1998", and that since then the Earth has stayed at the same temperature, or even cooled.

A new analysis confirms that global warming actually shows no sign of slowing down. That's according to Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, and his colleague Grant Foster.

Focusing on 1979-2010, the pair compared the five most important databases of global temperature: three based on surface weather stations, and two based on satellite measurements of temperatures in the lower troposphere. All of them show warming of 0.014-0.018 ?C per year.

Rahmstorf and Foster then factored out three phenomena that temporarily affect temperature: the El Ni?o Southern Oscillation, volcanic eruptions, and changes in the sun's brightness.

With these out of the picture, the overall warming trend is even clearer, and there is no sign of a recent slowdown. In fact, in the adjusted data 2009 and 2010 are the hottest years in all five datasets.

This shouldn't come as any great surprise. Back in July a similar study found that the apparent slowdown after 1998 was caused by increased pollution from China, the El Ni?o system in the Pacific, and a slight drop in the energy Earth gets from the sun. Also, the temperature data for 1995-2010 shows a statistically significant warming.

And back in 2008, our Climate Myths special feature explained the underlying fallacy of the "warming stopped in 1998" story. Even if the surface temperatures have indeed fallen since 1998 (which the new paper suggests is not the case), the surface is only a small part of the planet. A lot of the extra heat has gone into the oceans, and will eventually return to the surface.

It's also worth pointing out that the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study, run by critics of climate science, found strong evidence that Earth is indeed getting hotter.

Journal reference: Environmental Research Letters, in press

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1ab2318d/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A110C120Cno0Eglobal0Ewarming0Ehasnt0Estoppe0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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