Research: global warming has not undergone a ‘pause’June 5, 2015 - 11:07 AMT PanARMENIAN.Net - Global warming has not undergone a ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’, according to U.S. government research that undermines one of the key arguments used by sceptics to question climate science, the Guardian says. The new study reassessed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) temperature record to account for changing methods of measuring the global surface temperature over the past century. The adjustments to the data were slight, but removed a flattening of the graph this century that has led climate sceptics to claim the rise in global temperatures had stopped. “There is no slowdown in warming, there is no hiatus,” said lead author Dr Tom Karl, who is the director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Centre. Dr Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies said: “The fact that such small changes to the analysis make the difference between a hiatus or not merely underlines how fragile a concept it was in the first place.” The results, published on Thursday, June 4, in the journal Science, showed the rate of warming over the past 15 years (0.116C per decade) was almost exactly the same, in fact slightly higher, as the past five decades (0.113C per decade). In 2013, the UN’s most comprehensive report on climate science made a tentative observation that the years since 1998 had seen a “much smaller increasing trend” than the preceding half century. The results highlighted the inadequacy of using the global mean surface temperature as the primary yardstick for climate change. Karl said: “There’s been a lot of work done trying to understand the so-called hiatus and understand where is this missing heat.” A series of studies have since identified a number of factors, including heat transferred into deep oceans and small volcanic eruptions, that affected the temperature at the surface of the Earth. “Those studies are all quite valid and what they suggest is had those factors not occurred the warming rate would even be greater than what we report,” said Karl. Since scientists began to report a slower than expected rate of warming during the last decade, climate sceptics have latched on to the apparent dip in order to question the validity of climate models. Top stories David Vardanyan is the son of former Karabakh leader Ruben Vardanyan who who is currently imprisoned in Azerbaijan. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has met with Stephan Schütz, Executive Partner at Gerkan, Marg and Partners. The number of state universities will be reduced from 23 to 8 by 2030, Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport Zhanna Andreasyan has said. From September 21 to November 11, a total of 2,820 Russians registered at a place of residence in Armenia, the police has said. Partner news | U.S. warns Georgia not to side with Moscow against the west Georgia has been warned by the U.S. not to become an adversary of the west by falling back in line with Moscow. Moscow slams EU mission in Armenia for “provocative activity” The EU mission is doing more and more against Armenia’s neighbors Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran, Mikhail Galuzin said. Armenia, India hold first defense consultations The meeting was attended by Indian Ambassador Nilakshi Saha Sinha and Defense Attaché Brigadier General Naveen Nijhawan. Court in Azerbaijan extends former Karabakh leader’s arrest by 5 months The Binagadi District Court in Azerbaijan has granted the prosecutor’s petition to extend the arrest of Arkady Ghukasyan. |