The prestigious German magazine, Der Speigel, has published an article confirming that climate scientists are now certain that the world’s climate has not warmed at all between 1999 to 2008. This despite the fact that the IPCC assumed it rose 0.2C in this time frame.
These same scientists say that the climate warmed by 0.7C from the late 1970’s to the late 1990’s but “At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.”
This raises doubts about the predictive value of climate models and Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg says “We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”
According to Der Speigel, just a few weeks ago, Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius — in other words, a standstill.
Graph on warming trend - click for a larger version
The differences among individual regions of the world are considerable. In the Arctic, for example, temperatures rose by almost three degrees Celsius, which led to a dramatic melting of sea ice. At the same time, temperatures declined in large areas of North America, the western Pacific and the Arabian Peninsula. Europe, including Germany, remains slightly in positive warming territory.
Some scientists are trying to explain away the plateau but are concerned about their loss of credibility – surprise!
Source Der Speigel – translated into English
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