Despite previous reports, global warming is not slowing down, NOAA researchers say

Global warming trends have been higher during the 21st Century than previously reported, says a study by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Centers for Environmental Information. The study, published this week in the journal Science, found "that the rate of global warming during the last 15 years has been as fast as or faster than that seen during the latter half of the 20th Century," reports NOAA.

"The study refutes the notion that there has been a slowdown or 'hiatus' in the rate of global warming in recent years," reports NOAA. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, released in stages between September 2013 and November 2014, concluded that the upward global surface temperature trend from 1998­­-2012 was markedly lower than the trend from 1951-2012."

Improvements in studying sea surface temperature and land surface air temperature datasets, along with the fact that 2014 was the hottest year on record, contradicts the IPCC data, reports NOAA. New analyses "demonstrate that incomplete spatial coverage also led to underestimates of the true global temperature change previously reported in the 2013 IPCC report. The integration of dozens of data sets has improved spatial coverage over many areas, including the Arctic, where temperatures have been rapidly increasing in recent decades." (Read more) (NOAA graphic)