Cliff Mass Weather Blog: The "Pause" in Global Warming: What Does it Mean?

(Quelle: Cliff Mass Weather Blog)

The "Pause" in Global Warming: What Does it Mean?

The media mentions it frequently and global warming skeptics talk of little else:  the fact the global atmospheric temperatures have not gone up significantly during the past 10-15 years.

Does this disprove the idea that the planet will warm due to increased CO2 and other greenhouse gases?  Are the global climate models mistaken?  Who are telling the truth:   the skeptics or climate scientists?

My take on all this is that a decade of near-constant temperature does not show a fatal flaw in the climate science, but it does reveal poor communication and occasional overhyping by climate scientists.  And some cynical games by skeptics.

So what is all the debate about?  Here is a plot of global temperature from the NASA Goddard web site, showing the annual mean and 5-year running mean temperatures from 1880 to now (actually it shows the difference...or anomaly...from the average for 1951 to 1980). Error bars indicated by the green brackets.

Global temperatures fell to about 1910, rose to roughly 1940, leveled off for forty years, rose rapidly from 1980 to roughly 2000 and then have been nearly constant for the past 15 years. The level period during recent years is the "pause" that everyone is debating about.

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Cliff Mass Weather Blog: The "Pause" in Global Warming: What Does it Mean?