2013 Climate Change Report Confuses Public, Temperature Still Getting Warmer

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In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported the apparent slowing down of the rise of global temperatures. However, the said report caused the latest public confusion. What is really the truth behind this issue?

New reports told CBC News that there is an evidence that the data the IPCC was using in 2013 was incorrect and that oceanic temperatures continue to become warmer.

American scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were collecting data on oceanic surface temperatures and suggests that the warming of the ocean temperature did not stopped and the Earth's temperature are rising faster than ever.

In line with this issue, the U.S. House of Representatives Science and Technology committee began to investigate and some accused the scientists to politicizing their data.

Global warming and climate change are the terms for the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system and related effects. This is mostly being caused by human activities that led to the increase in concentrations of greenhouse gasses such as methane and carbon dioxide.

According to CSI, the steady increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the beginning of the industrial revolution has been monitored directly since 1959 and reconstructed earlier years from atmospheric samples trapped in ice. In May 2013, the concentration reached 400 ppm, which is 43 percent above pre-industrial CO2 levels. The increase is almost entirely caused by human activities specifically burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Basic physics tells that the increasing CO2 greenhouse effect will affect the temperature of the planet.

Measuring temperature in the ocean surface is quite difficult. Sophistication and more knowledge are needed to gauge accurate readings. The 2013 data used by the IPCC somehow were inaccurate leading to confusion and misleading reports.

Zeke Hausfather, one of the primary authors of the new report on global warming, explains that the measurements from buoys are more accurate but often cooler than ship-based devices because they sit directly in the water.

Since researchers switched to buoy-based systems in weighing their measurements, results appeared that the water was not warming when it really was to tune of 0.12 degrees Celsius per decade.

One thing that the scientists are suggesting right now is to use and look only at measurements in one type of instrument at a time to reduce potential temperature biases in one direction or another.

Hausfather said, "Instead of trying to splice together ships and buoys and all these different measurements and having to figure out offsets and adjustments between them, let us just look at sea-surface temperature records created by one instrument."

Amidst all of these, all scientists are suggesting the climate is still getting warmer even if it is in a small amount in a fraction of a degree. And no matter the model or instrument used, what is happening is real and the ocean is getting warmer in an alarming rate.