New fed data shows no stopping or slowing of global warming

FILE - In this Sept. 7, 2004 file photo, an unidentified woman shields her face from the sun while walking past a water fountain in Los Angeles, as temperatures reached a high of 93 degrees. Global warming has not stopped or even slowed in the past 18 years despite doubters’ claims of a hiatus, according to the federal government’s reanalysis of world temperature data. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration readjusted thousands of weather data points to account for different measuring techniques through the decades. Their calculations show that since 1998, the rate of warming is about the same as it has been from 1950 on: About two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit a decade. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File) FILE - In this Sept. 7, 2004 file photo, an unidentified woman shields her face from the sun while walking past a water fountain in Los Angeles, as temperatures reached a high of 93 degrees. Global warming has not stopped or even slowed in the past 18 years despite doubters’ claims of a hiatus, according to the federal government’s reanalysis of world temperature data. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration readjusted thousands of weather data points to account for different measuring techniques through the decades. Their calculations show that since 1998, the rate of warming is about the same as it has been from 1950 on: About two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit a decade. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)

By Associated Press June 4, 2015 4 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) – Global warming has not stopped or even slowed in the past 18 years, according to a new federal study that rebuts doubters who’ve claimed that that heating trends have paused.

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration readjusted thousands of weather data points to account for different measuring techniques through the decades. Their calculations show that since 1998, the rate of warming is about the same as it has been since 1950: about two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit a decade.

The so-called hiatus has been touted by non-scientists who reject mainstream climate science. Those claims have resonated; two years ago, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change felt the need to explain why the Earth was not heating up as expected, listing such reasons as volcanic eruptions, reduced solar radiation and the oceans absorbing more heat.

“The reality is that there is no hiatus,” said Tom Karl, director of the National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina. He is the lead author of a study published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Science

One key to claims of a hiatus is the start date: 1998. That year there was a big temperature spike; some of the following years were not as hot, though even hotter years followed in 2005, 2010 and 2014, according to NOAA, NASA and temperature records kept in England and Japan. This year is on pace to break last year’s global heat record.