Global warming is not slowing down

In all of the five global data sets, 2009 and 2010 were the two hottest years. As global temperatures are constantly being measured by several different scientific teams, each adopting different methods for dealing with their data, it is clear that no single record is free of complications, uncertainties and corrections.
Space researchers have added further clarity to the global climate trend, proving that global warming is showing no signs of slowing down and that further increases are to be expected in the next few decades.
They revealed the true global warming trend by bringing together and analyzing the five leading global temperature data sets, covering the period from 1979 to 2010, and factoring out three of the main factors that account for short-term fluctuations in global temperature: El Nino, - we’ll talk about it a bit later -  volcanic eruptions and variations in the Sun's brightness.
After removing these known short-term fluctuations, the researchers, statisticians and climate experts from European Tempo Analytics and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, showed that the global temperature has increased by 0.5C in the past 30 years.
In all of the five global data sets, 2009 and 2010 were the two hottest years. In the average over all five data sets, 2010 is the hottest year on record.
Their study comes at a time when global warming is at the forefront of the political agenda, with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that took place last December in Durban, South Africa.
It is well known that temperatures have been rising since the early 20th Century and the effects have become visible in shrinking mountain glaciers, accelerating ice loss and sea level rise.
 In recent years, however, there have been claims by some that the global warming trend has slowed or even paused over the last decade or so.
"Our approach shows that the idea that the global warming trend has slowed or even paused over the last decade or so is a groundless misconception. It shows that differences between the five data sets reside, to a large extent, in their short-term variability and not in the climatic trend. After the variability is removed, all five data sets are very similar," said study co-author Stefan Rahmstorf.
As global temperatures are constantly being measured by several different scientific teams, each adopting different methods for dealing with their data, it is clear that no single record is free of complications, uncertainties and corrections.
By bringing together and analyzing the five records - three surface records and two lower-troposphere records - the researchers were able to clarify the discrepancies between each one and, when factoring out the naturally occurring variability, show the excellent agreement between all five data sets.
The three surface temperature data sets analyzed by the researchers were from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Hadley Centre/Climate Research Unit in the UK. Data representing the lower troposphere temperatures was based on satellite microwave sensors.
El Nino is a naturally and irregularly occurring warming of surface ocean waters in the eastern tropical Pacific, whilst solar variation is the change in the amount of radiation emitted by the sun, dominated by an approximately 11-year-long cycle.
Volcanic eruptions predominantly have a cooling effect lasting a few years, due to the very tiny erupted particles and droplets shielding light from hitting the earth.
"The unabated warming is powerful evidence that we can expect further temperature increase in the next few decades, emphasizing the urgency of confronting the human influence on the climate," says Grant Foster, lead author of the study.
That may sound like good news, but it probably isn't, said Jim Channell, distinguished professor of geology at University of Florida. "Ice sheets like those in western Antarctica are already destabilized by global warming," said Channell. "When they eventually slough off and become a part of the ocean's volume, it will have a dramatic effect on sea level." Ice sheets will continue to melt until the next phase of cooling begins in earnest.
Unprecedented levels of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are disrupting normal patterns of glaciation, according to a study co-authored by University of Florida researchers and published in mid-January in American Nature Geoscience.
The Earth's current warm period that began about 11,000 years ago should give way to another ice age within about 1,500 years, according to accepted astronomical models.
However, current levels of carbon dioxide are trapping too much heat in the atmosphere to allow the Earth to cool as it has in its prehistoric past in response to changes in Earth's orbital pattern. The research team, collaboration among University College London, University of Cambridge and UF, said their data indicate that the next ice age will likely be delayed by tens of thousands of years.
The study looks at the prehistoric climate-change drivers of the past to project the onset of the next ice age. Using astronomical models that show Earth's orbital pattern with all of its fluctuations and wobbles over the last several million years, astronomers can calculate the amount of solar heat that has reached the Earth's atmosphere during past glacial and interglacial periods.
"We know from past records that Earth's orbital characteristics during our present interglacial period are a dead ringer for orbital characteristics in an interglacial period 780,000 years ago," said Channell. The pattern suggests that our current period of warmth should be ending within about 1,500 years.
However, there is a much higher concentration of greenhouse gases trapping the sun's heat in the Earth's atmosphere now than there was in at least the last several million years, he said. So the cooling that would naturally occur due to changes in the Earth's orbital characteristics is unable to turn the temperature tide.
Over the past million years, the Earth's carbon dioxide levels, as recorded in ice core samples, have never reached more than 280 parts per million in the atmosphere. "We are now at 390 parts per million," Channell said. The sudden spike has occurred in the last 150 years.
For millions of years, carbon dioxide levels have ebbed and flowed between ice ages. Orbital patterns initiate periods of warming that cause ocean circulation to change.
The changes cause carbon dioxide-rich water in the deep ocean to well up toward the surface where the carbon dioxide is released as a gas back into the atmosphere.
The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide then drives further warming and eventually the orbital pattern shifts again and decreases the amount of solar heat that reaches the Earth.
"The problem is that now we have added to the total amount of CO2 cycling through the system by burning fossil fuels," said Channell. "The cooling forces can't keep up."
Channell said that the study, funded by the National Science Foundation in the U.S, and the Research Council of Norway and the Natural Environment Research Council in the United Kingdom, brings to the forefront the importance of atmospheric carbon dioxide because it shows the dramatic effect that it is having on a natural cycle that has controlled our Earth's climate for millions of years.
"We haven't seen this high concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere for several million years," Channell said. "All bets are off."
According to Russian scientists there is another reason that greatly influences the global climate trend.
 The Earth is rotating around its own axis slower. The International Earth Rotation Service has regularly added a second or two to the length of a 24-hour day in recent years.
This is the main reason, according to Igor Kopylov, professor at Moscow Energy Institute, why the planet - a gigantic electrical machine - has had its energy balance upset.
 Kopylov is convinced that the Earth has entered the first phase of a global change. A weakening of the Earth's magnetic field was first registered early in the 20th century, and a consistent drop in the speed of rotation, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It has been established that when the Earth's rotation slows by one second a year, it releases a tremendous amount of heat, hundreds of times the volume of energy released by human industrial activity.