One of the favorite talking points of climate deniers is that there’s been no global temperature rise over the past 15 years.
While I thought they were just making it up, it turns out it did come from data, which has now been disproven in a study published in Science.
"The rate of global warming during the last 15 years has been as fast or faster than in previous decades," concludes the study, conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
There has been no "hiatus," they say, and the "results do not support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature."
The talking point comes from last year’s IPCC report, which said trends toward higher global surface temperatures were down from 1998-2012 compared to 1951-2012.
But that was because of limitations of past methods of data collection, says NOAA. Since then, NOAA scientists have significantly improved calculations and, with 2013 and 2014 factored in – the hottest years on record – it is clear that temperature rise continues unabated.
How Global Temperatures Are Measured
Measuring temperature is straight forward – use thermometers from weather stations on land and at sea.
Surprisingly, it’s only recently that weather stations have been installed in all areas of the world, and also recently, sea measurements have shifted from ships to buoys, which are much more accurate. Over the past decade, a network of thousands of weather stations and buoys have been developed.
"There will be a very predictable chorus of ‘data manipulation’ and ‘fraud’ as they see a talking point disappear, and so it will just continue as before. Just remember, their objections have little or nothing to do with science," Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist and director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told InsideClimate News.
Read the study:
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