New Climate Data

In November of 2013, my blog post expressed skepticism about global warming.  Skepticism, not denial but basically a desire for more information, because I saw a hiatus or leveling of the warming data measured by NASA.  Essentially, the period 1975 to 2002 showed a steep increase in the earth’s temperature.  The average increase was 0.023 degrees C per year.  If the trend remained it could have resulted in a 2.3 deg C (4.1 deg F) increase by the year 2100.  This was in the Al Gore (An Inconvenient Truth) era when sensitivity to the possibility of severe global warming became widespread (and the deniers flared up like a prairie wildfire).

Then about 2003 a hiatus in the warming began. Looking at the NASA data as it was published for several years, I saw a definite flat curve and that lead to my blog post in 2013.  In the 2003 to 2013 period, the annual temperature increase was only 0.0018 degrees C per year.  If this trend continued, the increase would only be 0.16 degrees C by 2100.

(This information is from NASA web site http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/

Now in 2015, the NASA data shows a sharp turn upward—sharper than in the earlier period.  The tabulated NASA data shows a temperature increase of 0.09 degrees C in 2014 and 0.13 degrees C in 2015.  These points are alarming—they could mean 0.11 degrees C per year or 9.4 degrees C (16.9 degrees F) increase by the year 2100.  Startling numbers!  Although two points on a chart aren’t conclusive, the need to take climate data seriously is obvious.

This increase is, to me, as mysterious as was the 10-year hiatus.  Let us hope that the scientists can freely delve into the nature of things without interference by politicians and their minions and provide us answers about the environment that in which we will live for future generations.