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Reconciling controversies about the 'global warming hiatus'.
Journal article

Reconciling controversies about the 'global warming hiatus'.

  • Medhaug I Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland.
  • Stolpe MB Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland.
  • Fischer EM Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland.
  • Knutti R Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland.
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  • 2017-05-05
Published in:
  • Nature. - 2017
Atmosphere
Carbon Dioxide
Datasets as Topic
Dissent and Disputes
Earth, Planet
Environmental Monitoring
Environmental Policy
Global Warming
History, 20th Century
History, 21st Century
Hot Temperature
Human Activities
Models, Theoretical
Public Opinion
Reproducibility of Results
Seawater
Uncertainty
English Between about 1998 and 2012, a time that coincided with political negotiations for preventing climate change, the surface of Earth seemed hardly to warm. This phenomenon, often termed the 'global warming hiatus', caused doubt in the public mind about how well anthropogenic climate change and natural variability are understood. Here we show that apparently contradictory conclusions stem from different definitions of 'hiatus' and from different datasets. A combination of changes in forcing, uptake of heat by the oceans, natural variability and incomplete observational coverage reconciles models and data. Combined with stronger recent warming trends in newer datasets, we are now more confident than ever that human influence is dominant in long-term warming.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/254327
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