US researchers say new evidence casts doubt on the idea that global warming has "slowed" in recent years.

 

A US government laboratory says the much talked about "pause" is an illusion caused by inaccurate data.

 

Updated observations show temperatures did not plateau, say National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists.

 

The warming rate over the past 15 years is "virtually identical" to the last century, they report in Science.

 

Dr. Thomas Karl of NOAA, who led the new analysis, said: "We would hope that it would inform the general public that the temperature today really is continuing to warm."

 

Commenting on the study, Dr. Ed Hawkins, climate scientist at the University of Reading, said: "This suggests that the much-discussed recent slowdown in global temperatures is far less pronounced than previously thought."

 

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global average temperatures have increased by around 0.05C per decade in the period between 1998 and 2012.

 

This compares with an average of 0.12 per decade between 1951 and 2012.

 

The new analysis suggests a figure of 0.116 per decade for 2000-2014, compared with 0.113 for 1950-1999.

 

"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'has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years than over the past 30 to 60 years' - is no longer valid," said Dr. Karl, the director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.

 

 

PHOTO: Land temperatures, December 2010.

CREDIT: NASA.