Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus
Walking back talk of the end of warming
Previous analyses of global temperature trends during the first decade of the 21st century seemed to indicate that warming had stalled. This allowed critics of the idea of global warming to claim that concern about climate change was misplaced. Karl et al. now show that temperatures did not plateau as thought and that the supposed warming “hiatus” is just an artifact of earlier analyses. Warming has continued at a pace similar to that of the last half of the 20th century, and the slowdown was just an illusion.
Science, this issue p. 1469
Abstract
Much study has been devoted to the possible causes of an apparent decrease in the upward trend of global surface temperatures since 1998, a phenomenon that has been dubbed the global warming “hiatus.” Here, we present an updated global surface temperature analysis that reveals that global trends are higher than those reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, especially in recent decades, and that the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century. These results do not support the notion of a “slowdown” in the increase of global surface temperature.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Already a Subscriber?Sign In
Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
Fig. S1
Table S1
Resources
References and Notes
1
IPCC, Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, T. F. Stocker, D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex, P.M. Midgley, Eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2013).
2
Meehl G. A., Teng H., Arblaster J. M., Climate model simulations of the observed early-2000s hiatus of global warming. Nature Clim. Change 4, 898–902 (2014).
3
Meehl G. A., Hu A., Arblaster J. M., Fasullo J., Trenberth K. E., Externally forced and internally generated decadal climate variability associated with the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation. J. Clim. 26, 7298–7310 (2013).
4
Kosaka Y., Xie S.-P., Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling. Nature 501, 403–407 (2013).
5
England M. H., et al., Slowdown of surface greenhouse warming due to recent Pacific trade wind acceleration. Nature Clim. Change 4, 222–227 (2014).
6
Santer B. D., Bonfils C., Painter J. F., Zelinka M. D., Mears C., Solomon S., Schmidt G. A., Fyfe J. C., Cole J. N. S., Nazarenko L., Taylor K. E., Wentz F. J., Volcanic contribution to decadal changes in tropospheric temperature. Nat. Geosci. 7, 185–189 (2014).
7
Schmidt G. A., Shindell D. T., Tsigaridis K., Reconciling warming trends. Nat. Geosci. 7, 158–160 (2014).
8
Tollefson J., Climate change: The case of the missing heat. Nature 505, 276–278 (2014).
9
Watanabe M., Kamae Y., Yoshimori M., Oka A., Sato M., Ishii M., Mochizuki T., Kimoto M., Strengthening of ocean heat uptake efficiency associated with the recent climate hiatus. Geophys. Res. Lett. 40, 3175–3179 (2013).
10
Fyfe J. C., Gillett N. P., Recent observed and simulated warming. Nature Clim. Change 4, 150–151 (2014).
11
Trenberth K. E., Fasullo J. T., Balmaseda M. A., Earth’s energy imbalance. J. Clim. 27, 3129–3144 (2014).
12
Ding H., Greatbatch R. J., Latif M., Park W., Gerdes R., Hindcast of the 1976/77 and 1998/99 climate shifts in the Pacific. J. Clim. 26, 7650–7661 (2013).
13
Huang B., Banzon V. F., Freeman E., Lawrimore J., Liu W., Peterson T. C., Smith T. M., Thorne P. W., Woodruff S. D., Zhang H.-M., Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature version 4 (ERSST.v4), Part I. Upgrades and intercomparisons. J. Clim. 28, 911–930 (2015).
14
Rennie J. J., et al., The international surface temperature initiative global land surface databank: Monthly temperature data release description and methods. Geosci. Data J. 1, 75–102 (2014).
15
Kent E. C., Kennedy J. J., Berry D. I., Smith R. O., Effects of instrumentation changes on sea surface temperature measured in situ. WIREs. Clim. Change 1, 718–728 (2010).
16
Reynolds R. W., Rayner N. A., Smith T. M., Stokes D. C., Wang W., An improved in situ and satellite SST analysis for climate. J. Clim. 15, 1609–1625 (2002).
17
Reynolds R. W., Chelton D. B., Comparisons of daily sea surface temperature analyses for 2007–08. J. Clim. 23, 3545–3562 (2010).
18
Kennedy J. J., Rayner N. A., Smith R. O., Parker D. E., Saunby M., Reassessing biases and other uncertainties in sea surface temperature observations measured in situ since 1850: 2. Biases and homogenization. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos. 116 (D14), D14104 (2011).
19
Lawrimore J. H., Rennie J. J., Thorne P. W., Responding to the need for better global temperature data. Eos 94, 61 (2014).
20
Menne M. J., Durre I., Vose R. S., Gleason B. E., Houston T. G., An overview of the Global Historical Climatology Network-Daily database. J. Atmos. Ocean. Technol. 29, 897–910 (2012).
21
Menne M. J., Williams C. N., Homogenization of temperature series via pairwise comparisons. J. Clim. 22, 1700–1717 (2009).
22
Lawrimore J. H., Menne M. J., Gleason B. E., Williams C. N., Wuertz D. B., Vose R. S., Rennie J., An overview of the Global Historical Climatology Network monthly mean temperature data set, version 3. J. Geophys. Res. 116 (D19), D19121 (2011).
23
Williams C. N., Menne M. J., Thorne P. W., Benchmarking the performance of pairwise homogenization of surface temperatures in the United States. J. Geophys. Res. 117 (D5), D05116 (2012).
24
Cowtan K., Way R. G., Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends. Q. J. Roy. Met. Soc. 140, 1935–1944 (2014).
25
Santer B., Thorne P. W., Haimberger L., Taylor K. E., Wigley T. M. L., Lanzante J. R., Solomon S., Free M., Gleckler P. J., Jones P. D., Karl T. R., Klein S. A., Mears C., Nychka D., Schmidt G. A., Sherwood S. C., Wentz F. J., Consistency of modelled and observed temperature trends in the tropical troposphere. Int. J. Climatol. 28, 1703–1722 (2008).
26
Smith T. M., Reynolds R. W., Extended reconstruction of global sea surface temperatures based on COADS data (1854-1997). J. Clim. 16, 1495–1510 (2003).
27
Sillman J., Donat M. G., Fyfe J. C., Zwiers F. W., Observed and simulated temperature extremes during the recent warming hiatus. Environ. Res. Lett. 9, 064023 (2014).
28
Smith T. M., Reynolds R. W., Peterson T. C., Lawrimore J. H., Improvements to NOAA’s historical merged land-ocean surface temperature analysis (1880-2006). J. Clim. 21, 2283–2296 (2008).
29
Woodruff S. D., Worley S. J., Lubker S. J., Ji Z., Eric Freeman J., Berry D. I., Brohan P., Kent E. C., Reynolds R. W., Smith S. R., Wilkinson C., ICOADS Release 2.5: Extensions and enhancements to the surface marine meteorological archive. Int. J. Climatol. 31, 951–967 (2011).
30
V. F. Banzon, R. W. Reynolds, T. Smith, in Proceedings: “Oceans from Space” Venice 2010, V. Barale, J.F.R. Gower, L. B. Alberotanza, Eds. (European Commission, Venice, Italy, 2010), pp. 27–28.
31
Vose R. S., et al., NOAA’s merged land-ocean surface temperature analysis. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 93, 1677–1685 (2012).
32
Smith T. M., Reynolds R. W., A global merged land air and sea surface temperature reconstruction based on historical observations (1880–1997). J. Clim. 18, 2021–2036 (2005).
33
D. L. Hartmann et al., in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, T. F. Stocker et al., Eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK, 2013).
34
Willmott C. J., Ackleson S. G., Davis R. E., Feddema J. J., Klink K. M., Legates D. R., O’Donnell J., Rowe C. M., Statistics for the evaluation and comparison of models. J. Geophys. Res. 90 (C5), 8995–9006 (1985).
35
Dodd E. M. A., Merchant C. J., Rayner N. A., Morice C. P., An investigation into the impact of using various techniques to estimate arctic surface air temperature anomalies. J. Clim. 28, 1743–1763 (2015).
36
Santer B. D., Wigley T. M. L., Boyle J. S., Gaffen D. J., Hnilo J. J., Nychka D., Parker D. E., Taylor K. E., Statistical significance of trends and trend differences in layer-average atmospheric temperature time series. J. Geophys. Res. 105 (D6), 7337–7356 (2000).
37
D. S. Wilks, Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences (Academic Press, New York, ed. 2, 2006)
38
Arguez A., Karl T. R., Squires M. F., Vose R. S., Uncertainty in annual rankings from NOAA's global temperature time series. Geophys. Res. Lett. 40, 5965–5969 (2013).
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Science
Volume 348 | Issue 6242
26 June 2015
26 June 2015
Copyright
Copyright © 2015, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Article versions
You are viewing the most recent version of this article.
Submission history
Received: 23 December 2014
Accepted: 21 May 2015
Published in print: 26 June 2015
Acknowledgments
We thank the many scientists at NCEI and at other institutions who routinely collect, archive, quality control, and provide access to the many complex data streams that go into the computation of the global surface temperature. In particular, we thank T. Boyer, B. Gleason, J. Matthews, J. Rennie, and C. Williams for their contributions to this analysis. We also thank J. Meehl and P. Duffy for constructive comments on an early version of this manuscript.
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Article Usage
Altmetrics
Citations
Export citation
Select the format you want to export the citation of this publication.
Cited by
- Seasonal temperature trends on the Spanish mainland: A secular study (1916–2015), International Journal of Climatology, 41, 5, (3071-3084), (2021).https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.7006
- An Updated Assessment of Near‐Surface Temperature Change From 1850: The HadCRUT5 Data Set, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 126, 3, (2021).https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD032361
- An updated evaluation of the global mean land surface air temperature and surface temperature trends based on CLSAT and CMST, Climate Dynamics, 56, 1-2, (635-650), (2021).https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05502-0
- Historical Estimates of Surface Marine Temperatures, Annual Review of Marine Science, 13, 1, (283-311), (2021).https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-042120-111807
- Ring widths of Rhododendron shrubs reveal a persistent winter warming in the central Himalaya, Dendrochronologia, 65, (125799), (2021).https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dendro.2020.125799
- Implementing Full Spatial Coverage in NOAA’s Global Temperature Analysis, Geophysical Research Letters, 48, 4, (2021).https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL090873
- Canadian In Situ Snow Cover Trends for 1955–2017 Including an Assessment of the Impact of Automation, Atmosphere-Ocean, 59, 2, (77-92), (2021).https://doi.org/10.1080/07055900.2021.1911781
- Malaria trends in Ethiopian highlands track the 2000 ‘slowdown’ in global warming, Nature Communications, 12, 1, (2021).https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21815-y
- Snow Cover—Observations, Processes, Changes, and Impacts on Northern Hydrology, Arctic Hydrology, Permafrost and Ecosystems, (61-99), (2021).https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50930-9
- Spatiotemporal variations and regional differences in air temperature in the permafrost regions in the Northern Hemisphere during 1980–2018, Science of The Total Environment, 791, (148358), (2021).https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148358
- See more
Loading...
View Options
Get Access
Log in to view the full text
AAAS login provides access to Science for AAAS members, and access to other journals in the Science family to users who have purchased individual subscriptions.
- Become a AAAS Member
- Activate your Account
- Purchase Access to Other Journals in the Science Family
- Account Help
Log in via OpenAthens.
Log in via Shibboleth.
More options
Register for free to read this article
As a service to the community, this article is available for free. Login or register for free to read this article.
Buy a single issue of Science for just $15 USD.
View options
PDF format
Download this article as a PDF file
Download PDF