The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published new research that suggests there was never a "hiatus" in global warming.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the NOAA published a study in the journal Science that suggests there was never a stoppage in the globe's temperature rise. Thomas Karl, director of NOAA's Climatic Data Center and the paper's lead author, pointed out an uninterrupted 0.2 average global temperature rise every year since 1950.
The first mention of a global warming hiatus came from a massive report from the U.N.-appointed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
"The IPCC's statement of two years ago - that the global surface temperature 'has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years than over the past 30 to 60 years' - is no longer valid," the study authors wrote in their research.
Karl told the Washington Post the IPCC - and possibly even his research - may not be properly taking into account the warming Arctic.
"It's pretty obvious that there's missing warming in the Arctic that we're not including," he said. "We think our dataset is still under-representing the total temperature rate of warming.
"Before this update, we were the slowest rate of warming.
"And with the update now, we're the leaders of the pack. So as other people make updates, they may end up adjusting upwards as well."
