Back in June of 2015, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a study that updated the global temperature record and increased the estimated rate of global warming over the past 15 years. (See Article Here)This study was met with controversy, specifically from Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
Smith has a history of climate change and climate science denial and furthered this agenda by subpoenaing NOAA scientists for communications related to the analysis in the study. This gave rise to an independent review on the climate data by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
After a year of review, the researchers have confirmed the accuracy of the data in the NOAA report and proved NOAA did not manipulate data to advance Obama’s climate change agenda, as Smith claimed.
The NOAA study found that the planet experienced .086 degrees Celsius warming per decade between 1998 and 2012, more than double what previous estimates claimed. If 2013 and 2014 are included, this raises to .116 degrees Celsius.
“Our new analysis,” said Thomas Karl, lead NOAA scientist on the study, “suggests that the apparent hiatus may have been largely the result of limitations in past datasets, and that the rate of warming over the first 15 years of this century has, in fact, been as fast or faster than that seen over the last half of the 20th century.”