Since the turn of the century, there has been little increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s surface, new research claims. Previous studies claimed this hiatus has lasted for 15 years, but new research believes the temperature has remained almost constant since 1995.
The conclusions were made by an economics professor who studied historical land and ocean temperatures for noticeable trends.
Professor Ross McKitrick from the University of Guelph in Canada studied land and ocean temperatures since 1850. He compared this to satellite data from 1979 to 2014. By plotting trends in this data, he has concluded that global warming has been on pause for 19 years (illustrated)
In his recent paper, Professor Ross McKitrick from the University of Guelph in Canada studied average land and ocean temperatures from the Hadcrut4 temperature series, dating back to 1850.
Hadcrut4 is a monthly record of temperature readings created by the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office, and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit.
It combines sea surface temperatures with land surface air temperatures into a grid that shows variations and anomalies.
Professor McKitrick also compared these readings to those taken by the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) satellite, which has measured upper air temperatures since 1979.
In both datasets, he noticed a period where the line levelled off, from around 1990.
Professor McKitrick studied average land and ocean temperatures from the Hadcrut4 temperature series, dating back to 1850. It combines sea surface temperatures with land surface air temperatures into a grid that shows variations. This graph shows anomalies between 1961 and 1990
By using this information to plot trends, Professor McKitrick concluded that global warming has been on ‘hiatus’ for the past 19 years.
And this ranges from between 16 to 26 years in the lower troposphere – the lowest section of the Earth’s atmosphere.