PCIC science brief: Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus
Date
2015-07
Authors
Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)
Abstract
In a recent paper published in Science, Karl et al. (2015) revise the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) surface temperature data set and examine temperature trends in the updated data. The authors use a sea surface temperature data set that has been corrected for biases in sea surface data that arise due to the difference in measurements from ships and buoys, and the authors incorporate a much larger amount of data from land-based observations.
They find that the global warming trend in the updated data set over the 1998-2012 period is just over double of that in the old data set, about 0.086 °C per decade, compared to 0.039 °C per decade. This is largely due to the corrections in sea surface temperature measurements. The updated data shows a statistically significant global warming trend over the 1998-2012 period and the authors note that their results "do not support the notion of a 'slowdown' in the increase of global surface temperature."
Description
Keywords
UN SDG 13: Climate Action, #science brief, Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)