Global Warming Hiatus
gregladen | June 4, 2015There is no such thing as a "pause" or "hiatus" in global warming.
There is, however, variation as the earth's surface temperature steadily rises as the result of the human release of greenhouse gas pollution. Every now and then that variation results in a period of several years when the rise in global temperature is relatively slow, and a recent such period has been termed a "hiatus" or "pause." But that signifier mainly comes from those who deny the reality of global warming, and is often used by them as an argument that global warming is somehow not real. It is real, and they are wrong…
gregladen | September 4, 2013Over the last decade the surface temperatures of the earth have increased. During the previous decades, the surface temperatures of the earth increased at a somewhat higher rate. Meanwhile, over the last decade there seems to be some extra heat gain in the deeper ocean. Also, some of the surface heat is busy melting the planet's glaciers and the Arctic Sea ice. That heat does not contribute to the surface heat measurement. So, global warming has not slowed down.
This is what we know.
Here is a nice video that explains some of this from the Yale Climate Forum, made by Peter Sinclair.
gregladen | July 22, 2013It has been said that global warming has stopped over the last several years. Some say it has not been happening for 17 years, some say for ten years, some say for 12 years. Let's test these hypotheses
Hypothesis: June, the most recent month with full data, was an average year, not a warm year.
Now that July is nearly over, we can look back at the data for June and see how warm or cool June was.
According to data from NOAA and NASA, summarized here,
June was one of the hottest such months on record globally...The month extended the unbroken string of warmer-than-average months to 340,…