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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Global cooling - Is global warming still happening?

What the science says...

Select a level... Basic Intermediate

All the indicators show that global warming is still happening.

Climate Myth...

It's cooling

"In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable." (source: Henrik Svensmark)

At a glance

Earth's surface, oceans and atmosphere are all warming due to our greenhouse gas emissions, but at different rates. Some places are also warming much faster than others: parts of the Arctic for example. That variability is partly because other phenomena act to offset or enhance warming at times. A good example are the effects of La Nina and El Nino, an irregular variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean that can influence temperatures and rainfall patterns right around the world.

El Nino causes even warmer years whereas La Nina tends to peg temperatures back to an extent. Thus 2023 – an El Nino year - was the warmest year on record, according to the USA-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but other recent years have not been far behind – 2016 and 2019 are in second and third place respectively. The worrying thing is that 2019 only saw a mild El Nino. And even with a La Nina featuring, 2021 and 2022 were, respectively, still the seventh and sixth hottest years on record.

The year 1998 featured a massive El Nino and consequent temperature spike that was a strong outlier, well above the steady upward trend. That spike and the subsequent return to a more “normal” warming pattern led to claims in the popular media that global warming had “paused” or had even stopped. This was a typical misinformation tactic that, as usual, time has proved wrong. As things currently stand, the top ten warmest years have all been since 2010 and 1998 is nowhere to be seen any more. By modern standards, it simply wasn't warm enough.

Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above!


Further details

In the years following 1998, at the time the hottest year on record, there was a concerted misinformation campaign to convince the public that global warming had variously slowed down, stopped or even that we were entering a period of cooling. Of course, we now know that such claims were nowhere near correct. In today's top ten ranking of warmest years, the year 1998 is nowhere to be seen. It simply wasn't warm enough. So let's take a look at how the claims came about, because they reveal insights into the methodology of those who design and spread misinformation.

The entire planet continues to accumulate heat due to the energy imbalance created through our greenhouse gas emissions. Earth's atmosphere is warming. Oceans are accumulating energy. Land absorbs energy and ice absorbs heat to melt. Year to year ups and downs in these things are simply noise, reflecting variations in how that heat is moved around the planet and what other influences are at work, such as the irregular El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) that can nudge the global temperature one way or another by up to 0.3C. That's why 1998 was such a warm outlier: it coincided with a very strong El Nino. El Nino conditions always warm things up whereas La Nina conditions cool things down (figure 1).

GISTEMP-ENSO-coded-plot from RealClimate

Figure 1: GISTEMP anomalies to end-2023 (with respect to late 19th Century), coded for ENSO state in the early spring - red is El Nino, blue La Nina. 2023 is in grey because that El Nino did not develop until later in the year. Graphic courtesy of Realclimate.

Climatologists routinely use multi-decadal blocks of time when presenting temperature trends for a very good reason. Such blocks allow you to stand back and look at the bigger picture. Due to the noise, taking a much shorter time-span – say just five or ten years – allows you to say anything you like about trends, depending on the particular block you pick.

For example, if you picked a short run of 5-10 years ending in 1998, you could have – if you were so inclined – said, “look how fast it's warming!” Likewise, taking a number of years starting with 1998, you could have made the equally invalid claim that global warming had stopped. And of course, that claim was made, vociferously, in the early-mid 2000s. It was a classic example of cherry-picking: the manifestly unscientific practice of choosing the data that supports the argument one is paid to make on behalf of those who sponsor misinformation campaigns. Once you know about such tricks, you can challenge them yourself. You can ask someone why they showed such a short temperature record when showing a much longer one is the normal practice.

It is difficult but technically possible to filter out the noise described above from temperature datasets. In the paper Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) the authors used the statistical technique of multiple linear regression to filter out the effects of ENSO, solar and volcanic activity (Figure 2). They found that the underlying global surface and lower atmosphere warming trends have in fact remained steady in recent years. There's still noise in there but nowhere near as much. We were still warming all along.

before/after filtering

Figure 2: Five datasets of global surface temperature and lower troposphere temperature are shown before and after removing the short-term effects of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), solar variability, and volcanic aerosols.  A 12-month running average was applied to each dataset.

Last updated on 4 June 2024 by John Mason. View Archives

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Update

On 21 January 2012, 'the skeptic argument' was revised to correct a minor formatting error.

Denial101x video

Here is a related video lecture from Denial101x - Making sense of climate science denial

Comments

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Comments 101 to 125 out of 323:

  1. Chris @100, IMHO, this is a no win for you. Your friend has clearly made up his/her mind that some conspiracy is afoot; so no matter how much science, data and reason you provide, s/he will just keep moving the goal posts or arguing strawmen or claiming there is a conspiracy going on. I my experience, people like this never concede a thing, and have no interest in the "truth", but only the "truth" as they perceive it. I sense a lot of bluster and extremely little, if any, substance in his/her rant. Rather it is just another long list of common (and predictable) misinformation being parroted from places like ClimateDepot. I might regret this, but perhaps the best thing to do is to urge/challenge him/her to post here. That way we can address each and every misguided, unsubstantiated and incorrect assertion they make. Also, it will force him/her to put their money where their mouth is.
  2. Chris @ 100 - where's the evidence from those scientists that the Earth is cooling?. Not the UK or parts of the US in winter, the Earth.
  3. @101, thanks a lot, albatross. I've been a bit down lately with the amount of persistent rot-postings here. Inviting another one looks almost like masochism. Back to Chris's problem. The friend seems not to have provided names or references for this assemblage of learned persons. My response to this on other sites is to ask for names - I can do the scholar and general google searching thereafter myself. Chris cannot possibly deal with the mindset or the ideology or the paranoia. The strategy is simply to focus on specifics. And show a proper regard for facts - "I found this paper by A Williams, is that the one you meant?" Remember, you're not looking for a road to Damascus moment for this particular person. You're looking to chip away at the edges of their certainty about particulars, a.n.d. , to display to any observers of the exchange which of you has a better grasp of the correct way to find and interpret facts about science.
  4. @Chris: I agree with others here, your friend doesn't want to tackle this in a rational way, hence the belief in conspiracy theories involving scientists, NASA, NOAA, etc. The fact is, the Earth is *not* cooling, and we are not currently in a cold phase. It's above zero here in Quebec city, on January 1st. That is very warm indeed. I would suggest to your friend that he come here and post himself, so we can show him the errors of his ways. He better bring along evidence, however...
  5. This just in: 2010 ties 2005 for coldest year on record! Brrr! Time to buy some coal for the furnace...preferably anthracite... ( -edit: NASA agrees end edit- ) The Poe-Yooper
  6. #105: Cherry-picking again, Yooper? + Northern Hemisphere combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest year on record, at 0.73°C + global land surface temperature for 2010 tied with 2005 as the second warmest on record, at 0.96°C + global ocean surface temperature for 2010 tied with 2005 as the third warmest on record, at 0.49°C --All anomalies quoted are above 20th century average. See how the full story is much cooler. Some will say: no warming since 2005! GW is so over.
  7. 105 & 106 - UAH satellite data agrees too. It's a trifecta!. From Roy Spencer: "WHO WINS THE RACE FOR WARMEST YEAR? As far as the race for warmest year goes, 1998 (+0.424 deg. C) barely edged out 2010 (+0.411 deg. C), but the difference (0.01 deg. C) is nowhere near statistically significant. So feel free to use or misuse those statistics to your heart’s content." Sore loser!.
  8. I am very curious to understand why the effects of the sun are not calculated into the global warming scenario. Our sun is already middle aged and will eventually fry the earth if science does not find a way to distance them. Shouldn't all factors be taken into consideration when looking for an accurate analysis and figures on what is causing the earth and its oceans to warm?
    Response: In the Search field at the top left of the page, type "It's the sun" without the quote marks.
  9. @MJ: In a nutshell, we know it's not the sun because we can measure Total Solar Irradiance, and it's actually decreasing a little right now. The effects of the sun are, in fact, calculated in the Global Climate Models. May I suggest you read a bit more about the subject on this site before commenting?
  10. MJ LIberto@108 The effects of the sun *are* taken into account in modelling global climate. However we have measurements that show that changes in solar activity are too small and in the wrong direction to explan the warming of the last 40 years or so. The IPCC WG1 scientific basis report though attributes much of the warming of the first half of the 20th century to solar activity. Note the number 1 skeptic argument is "It's the sun".
  11. MJ Liberto, to satisfy your curiosity, and in addition to what has already been posted for you, why not also have a look at this page, where you can find the 'It's the Sun' argument and others that are linked to it. And to see how all possible factors are taken into consideration, why not look at Newcomers Start Here, The Big Picture and Skeptic Arguments and what the Science says.
  12. #109 "we can measure Total Solar Irradiance, and it's actually decreasing a little right now." This is actually kinda funny, See TSI. Can you specify "a little"?
    Response: See the Argument "It's the Sun," and continue the conversation there.
  13. Someone asked me to name one of the scientists that my skeptic friend was citing to support his position and this morning he named a guy called Lubos Motl. Apparently Motl is a “Theoretical physicist, a graduate of Charles University in Prague, Rutgers University and has been a Harvard Junior Fellow and assistant professor. He’s worked on such common problems as the pp-wave limit of AdS/CFT correspondence, twistor theory and its application to gauge theory with supersymmetry, black hole thermodynamics and the conjectured relevance of quasinormal modes for loop quantum gravity, deconstruction, and other topics.” This is his latest comment on his blog where he seems rather upbeat about the UN and US moving away from tackling climate change: http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/01/ban-ki-moon-gives-up-fight-against.html Has anyone ever heard of this guy and what your thoughts on his latest comments?
  14. Chris - Lubos Motl does indeed have extensive string theory experience (I won't claim to be an expert in that; I have no real opinion about how good he is). He was at Harvard until a couple of years ago - he left that institution in mid-semester for some reason. He is also a frequent commenter on climate change - his blog apparently seems to alternate between physics and climate change posts. Keep in mind that expertise in one field does not automatically grant expertise in another! I frequently have to deal with PhD's or MD's who make that mistake. I would suggest trying a quick Google search on his name, and read the top 10 or so results. He tends to provoke strong opinions from everyone - he's a less than polite commenter.
  15. Thanks, KR. I looked him up and he certainly has provoked a few strong opinions. He seems like a renegade who enjoys stirring up trouble for its own sake.
  16. The ten indicators of global warming described all respond to the suns heating except ocean heat content which is related to stored heat. Few manmade GW sceptical scientists I know of disagree that CO2 causes warming. The argument seems to be about the level of CO2's influence. Climate change seems to be accepted by all only the degree of human influence is questioned. However there seems to be violent disagreement over the amount of energy reaching the planet. I understand CO2 traps the heat reflected from the planets surface driving the ten indicators and the manmade GW followers insist that the suns heat remains constant. While many of the sceptics insist that there is variability in the amount of heat reaching the planets surface. Those sceptics argue that the variability is due to sun influenced cloud cover while the MMGW folowers argue that the suns output is not varying. The global warming supporters only argument against the cosmic ray influence on cloud cover seems to be by issisting that the suns output is constant. I have not heard an argument against the mechanism described by some of the sceptics. If someone understands why the variability of the suns magnetic shield has no influence on our climate then please explain. So far all the supporters of manmade global warming seem to do is try to shout down sceptics which only places doubt in my mind over their confidence in the theory. Currently I sense the planet is cooling but I am told it is really warming. I hope it is warming because I am not convinced that a warmer future is more dangerous to my grandchildren that a colder world.
    Response: No, the energy being trapped by CO2 is not heat being "reflected" by the planet's surface, but the energy absorbed and then radiated; see "CO2 effect is weak." Nobody is "insisting" that "the Sun's heat remains constant"; see "It’s the sun." The evidence in favor of the role of cosmic rays is entirely unconvincing; see "It’s cosmic rays." Your "sense" that the planet is cooling is trumped by the empirical evidence; please read the post at the top of this page. Regarding warming not being bad, see "It’s not bad." And if you want to comment on any of those specific topics, please do so on the appropriate one of those threads. Off topic comments get deleted after a polite warning or two. Also, I strongly suggest that you read The Big Picture, which you can get to any time by clicking on its image at the top right of The Home Page.
  17. Notsure, The influence of cosmic rays on temperature is covered in Could Cosmic Rays Be Causing Global Warming. The post addresses almost all the issues you have raised.
  18. Notsure (#116) The moderator has beaten me to the reply button it seems so I will address a few other (perhaps off topic) points. "I have not heard an argument against the mechanism described by some of the sceptics. If someone understands why the variability of the suns magnetic shield has no influence on our climate then please explain." Would you provide some links to explain these mechanisms? It is up to the person making a claim to support there position before others can critique. "So far all the supporters of manmade global warming seem to do is try to shout down sceptics which only places doubt in my mind over their confidence in the theory." You have come to the right place then as that behavior is not tolerated here. Yours is the polar opposite to my own personal experience. In my discussions with Skeptics I have only ever been presented with incomplete hypotheses , conspiracy theories and (ultimately) insults. The supporters of the AGW theory have provided me with mountains of data and explanations.
  19. A little picky, rebounding, reflecting or absorbsion and re-emission. Technically it may be different but simplified its the same. Weather and climate are a result of mechanisms that no scientist fully understands or could ever fully explain. All the references highlighted in the response have benn exhaustively shown unfortunatly there still remain sceptics. Science is forged on sceptism. Sceptics form science if no questions are posed no answers are found. The majority are sceptical because any sign of sceptism is put down by those promoting the theory of man made global warming. Unless proper reasoned arguments are given people will sense untruth. I hope i have an open mind. I hear non scientists but listen to scientists and expect reasoned argument. The global warming debate is driven by models. The sceptics seems to be driven by history. Where the conflict seems to come is where the history is questioned. So far the sceptics seem to be more open (not the cranks, there there are many on both sides) If the world is warming and we are heading for problems then understand the sceptical viewpoint and use them to refine the argument. To continue to put down critism smells of a shaky religion not confident of its facts. Get it right because time and money is being spent. If it is in the right areas then ok but if not then beware we are driving ourselves in the wrong direction. The planet is our responsibility at the moment which we hand to our children. Our children will judge us in turn.
  20. Skepticism quickly becomes denial when the proper reasoned arguments are rejected on the basis that they conflict with preconceived notion. People's sense of "untruth" is based on emotion. If you truly are interested in learning about this scientific field, please read through this site & follow the primary source links for more reading material. Please respect the moderation of this site, which keeps it a civil place for discussing science. References to religion are not helpful. The global warming debate is driven by models. The sceptics seems to be driven by history. Please continue these discussions on the threads that already exist for these topics. They are both linked in the box at the top left corner titled "Most Used Skeptic Arguments". #5: Models are unreliable #2: Climate's changed before
  21. Notsure wrote : "Weather and climate are a result of mechanisms that no scientist fully understands or could ever fully explain." Does it matter ? Does any scientist fully understand the workings of Evolution or how the universe was created ? By the way, weather forecasts are invariably right these days, up to a certain number of days, so someone somewhere must know what they're doing. Notsure wrote : "The majority are sceptical because any sign of sceptism is put down by those promoting the theory of man made global warming." Can you give some reasonable examples, with regard to that "majority" and those being "put down" ? Notsure wrote : "The global warming debate is driven by models." No. I think you should have a look at a page on here that gives an outline of what we know and gives more links : The Big Picture Notsure wrote : "The sceptics seems to be driven by history." Do you have any examples you can give and link to ? Notsure wrote : "So far the sceptics seem to be more open (not the cranks, there there are many on both sides)." Do you have any examples you can give and link to ? Who would you class as the "cranks" on both sides ? You can give your answers on either of the links Bibliovermis gives, or find one of your own by searching this site.
  22. Notsure - so far the points you have made are show you are skeptical because you are uninformed as to what the data is and what is known or unknown. Now I agree with science being always skeptical - a constant search for errors and alternative explanations. However, real skepticism has be actually informed and climate pseudo-skeptics are mostly put down because they trot out long-debunked disinformation to support agendas not founded on data. Feel fdels, but theree to propose alternative mo
  23. #119: "A little picky, rebounding, reflecting or absorbsion and re-emission. Technically it may be different but simplified its the same." There is a huge difference between reflection and absorption/re-emission. Clouds, ice/snow, atmospheric dust, etc reflect a portion of the sun's energy back into space; this energy is then not available to heat the planet. On the other hand, energy that is absorbed at the earth's surface, to be re-emitted as infrared as the surface warms, is at the heart of greenhouse warming. "Weather and climate are a result of mechanisms that no scientist fully understands" Not really. In the utmost simplification, weather is planet's local, temporary response to differential heating and moisture conditions. Climate is the long term average and trend of this response. "The global warming debate is driven by models. The sceptics seems to be driven by history." Most science is driven by models these days. Models make complicated systems easier to describe and understand. And models are driven by history, because they must include past behavior. What you call 'skeptics' (more likely to be what we call deniers) are driven by neither. You'll find they often just make things up, take items out of context and try to explain by gross over-simplification. Please do take advantage of the tremendous amount of information available here. Read the Newcomers Guide, the Big Picture and then start working your way through the Most Used Arguments. Put 'what you've heard' and 'what it seems to be' on hold, so you can learn from the science. As Bibliovermis suggests, find the appropriate threads for comments and questions.
  24. Notsure: "Get it right because time and money is being spent." Climate science is receiving greater scrutiny than perhaps any other area of science, excepting evolution. There are massive lobbying dollars being spent in the U.S. to discredit the science--and this lobbying is not based on an alternative theory that explains the instrumental record. It is simply an attack to stop legislation that might help mitigate the developing problem, because the legislation will hurt particular industries. If you want to be convinced, then do the math yourself. If you can't or won't do the thinking, then you're always going to rely on people you think you should trust, and they're always going to have power over you. That's fine--it's necessary sometimes. Yet who do you trust? Climate scientists, who don't really roll in the dough and don't have a vested interest in a warming planet (other than having to live in it)? Or pundits and big oil-financed lobbyists whose interests are not scientific but simply in achieving legislative or political effects, whatever the means? At least try to understand the basic mechanisms involved. Go over to scienceofdoom.com and do some brain sweating. The comment "A little picky, rebounding, reflecting or absorbsion and re-emission" is custom made for a ticket to SoD. Remember: if we ignore this problem and it turns out the scientists are all wrong, then all this will be over within a decade, and heads will roll. Such a hoax couldn't last long with new generations of researchers coming on line. If scientists are right, and the observed warming continues, and we ignore it when we had a chance to do something about it, then we will and should be damned daily by our children and grandchildren.
  25. 'Remember: if we ignore this problem and it turns out the scientists are all wrong, then all this will be over within a decade, and heads will roll. Such a hoax couldn't last long with new generations of researchers coming on line. If scientists are right, and the observed warming continues, and we ignore it when we had a chance to do something about it, then we will and should be damned daily by our children and grandchildren.' I agree, however it is far more than the scientists reputations at stake (on both sides of the argument). If global warming is continuing and is caused by CO2 and poses a threat I agree we should take action. If not and global cooling increases in pace. (We are in a interglacial period within an iceage remember). This may be wasted effort. If we are heading for dangerous cooling instead of dangerous warming we may harm our ability to adapt by wasting precious time. I feel that we are not taking sufficient action to prevent global warming through our actions. Nor are we taking sufficient steps to check that understanding of climate change is correct. Labeling critics as deniers only builds barriers between the two sides of the argument. If you are convinced that warming is the only danger and have supported all available measures to reduce the risk then sleep well at night. If we ignore the posibility that we have misunderstood and have labeled CO2 as a danger and have damaged our ability to feed and warm ourselves we will pay the price. Whatever action we take we must test it on the way and be prepared to adapt or change course if we are in error.
    Response: We are not heading into a new ice age anytime soon. That is several tens of thousands of years away, as explained on the post "We’re heading into an ice age" and the comments there.

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