Maybe Global Warming Didn't Slow Down After All. Now Speeding Up?

A NOAA analysis shows no slowdown in global
warming in recent decades, contrary
to much discussion in recent years.  

The global warming watchers of the world, the scientists and public who are concerned about it, and the dwindling number of people who think it isn't happening, were pretty wild about a NOAA study that came out last week.  

Remember that "pause" in global warming? Where global temperatures supposedly didn't really increase much in the past decade or so? Didn't happen.

It turns out global warming continued roughly on pace the way it has for decades now.

The only mitigating part of this is, global warming should have accelerated over the past decade or two. Instead, it plodded along at the same rate it did in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

Maybe "plodding" isn't the right word, since the the rate of warming in the late 20th century was extraordinary, at least compared to global temperature change over eons.

Here's the scary part.  A variety of natural factors seems to have prevented global warming from accelerating over the past decades. These factors included volcanic eruptions that put sun-blocking sulfer dioxide in the air, heat transfer deep into oceans, cyclical shifts in Pacific Ocean currents, the predominance of cooling El Nina weather patterns, and other influences

Many of these temporary phenomenon  are fading. We might have begun an acceleration in the rate of global warming starting in 2014. That year was widely regarded as the warmest year in modern history.

Plus, 2015, is on a good pace to be warmer than 2014.

A group of NOAA scientists, in a study published in Science had this to say, according to ThinkProgress:

"The authors warned that by 2020, human-caused warming will over the Earth's climate system into a regime of rapid multi-decadal rates of warming. They project that within the next few years, 'there is an increased likelihood of accelerated global warming associated with release of heat from the subsurface ocean and a reversal of the phase of decadal variability in the Pacific Ocean." 

Of course, global warming will never go on a steady pace whether we deal with it or ignore it or do something in between.  Some or all of those natural factors we talked about could temporarily slow global warming again after a burst of more rapid warming.

Some years, maybe 2015, will be the warmest on record. There will be other years in the near future warmer than 2015. But a few years, maybe even 2016 will be slightly cooler than 2014 or 2015.

No matter. The trend is there, it's strong, it could be strengthening. Let's hope the debate has moved well beyond whether global warming is happening and instead, we should be debating what we should do about it.

No matter