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SAN FRANCISCO. – A study by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley Earth, a non-profit research institute, disproves what is known as the “global warming hiatus.”

The hiatus, which stems from a 2015 paper that concluded there was no detectable slowdown in ocean warming over the previous 15 years, has been cited by those dubious about global warming as evidence that climate change is a hoax.

An analysis indicates that modern buoys now used to measure ocean temperatures tend to report slightly cooler temperatures than older ship-based systems, even when measuring the same part of the ocean at the same time. As buoy measurements have replaced ship measurements, this had hidden some of the real-world warming.

After correcting for this “cold bias,” researchers with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calculated then that the oceans have actually warmed 0.12 degrees Celsius per decade since 2000, nearly twice as fast as earlier estimates of 0.07 degrees Celsius per decade.

This brought the rate of ocean temperature rise in line with estimates for the previous 30 years, between 1970 and 1999. The new study, published Wednesday in the online, open-access journal Science Advances, uses independent data from satellites and robotic floats as well as buoys, and concludes that the NOAA results were correct.

“Our results mean that essentially NOAA got it right, that they were not cooking the books,” said lead author Zeke Hausfather, a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group, explaining that years ago, mariners measured the ocean temperature by scooping up a bucket of water from the ocean and sticking a thermometer in it. – Xinhua