- by: Graham Lloyd
- From:The Australian
- January 23, 201412:00AM
AVERAGE global surface temperatures remained high last year, but have reignited debate about the controversial climate change "pause" that some people claim has now lasted for 17 years.
According to NASA, last year was the seventh warmest on record, while the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration placed the 12-month period at No 4.
The global average includes Australia's high temperatures last year, which the Bureau of Meteorology said had set a record.
The NASA data showed a temperature anomaly of 0.6C above the global average temperature of 14C recorded between 1951 and 1980. This was up 0.02C on the 2012 anomaly, but below the 0.67C anomaly in 2010 and identical to 2006 and 2009. NOAA put the 2013 average temperature at 0.58C above the 1951-1980 average.
David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London said both the NOAA and NASA figures showed that the "pause" in global surface temperatures that began in 1997, according to some estimates, had continued. "Statistically speaking there has been no trend in global temperatures over this period," Dr Whitehouse said. "All these years will fall within each other's error bars."
He said the error bars had been omitted in the graphs presented at the NOAA and NASA press conference to announce the results.
Gavin Schmidt of NASA and Thomas Karl of NOAA told reporters at the release of the annual temperature data that the warming impact of rising levels of CO2 had been masked by volcanoes, pollution, a quiet sun and natural variability.
The latest update report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also highlighted the increased storage of heat in the oceans. Local climate science advocates claimed the NOAA and NASA figures would be "used by sceptics to claim global temperatures had stopped rising".
"The safest prediction that can be made is that it will do nothing to change the actual or ostensible opinions of self-described 'sceptics', most of whom will continue to think that the occurrence of a single relatively hot year (1998) in the late 20th century implies that global warming has 'stopped' or 'paused' in the 21st century," economics professor John Quiggin said in a statement released by the Australian Science Media Centre.
Australian Bureau of Meteorology senior climatologist Blair Trewin said the NOAA and NASA data showed "that 2013 is clearly in the world's 10 warmest years on record". "Nine of the 10 warmest years have occurred since 2002," he said.
Griffith University emeritus professor and Australian Conservation Foundation chairman Ian Lowe said the NOAA report confirmed the world was warming.
"While some media outlets are repeating the myth spread by deniers that there has been a pause in warming, the NOAA data confirm that the trend of global warming is continuing," he said. "It also confirms we are seeing more extremes of weather, as the science has been warning us to expect for 25 years."
Professor Neville Nicholls from the Monash University School of Geography and Environmental Science said the rise was more dramatic if looked at over land. "Global temperatures over land have increased at a rate of about 1.5C per century, over the last 15 years," he said.