@fyfe2016: Making Sense of the Early-2000s Warming Slowdown

NCC commentary, slowdown was real, but not a stop, and mainly driven by internal decadal variability plus natural forcing.

paper scope/work/research/warmingHiatus

citation_key: fyfe2016
title: Making Sense of the Early-2000s Warming Slowdown
author: John C. Fyfe, Gerald A. Meehl, Matthew H. England, Michael E. Mann, Benjamin D. Santer, Gregory M. Flato, Ed Hawkins, Nathan P. Gillett, Shang-Ping Xie, Yu Kosaka, Neil C. Swart
journal: Nature Climate Change
year: 2016
doi: 10.1038/nclimate2938

If there is a "hiatus"?

Some paper argues that the "hiatus" or "slowdown" is not real, lack of statistical significance, or just a bais in the data.

This paper says it's real, statistically observable.

One important point is that we should pick the baseline period carefully. Some papers pick 1950-1999 and argue that the slowdown is not there. But the period that has the similar physical processes and human influence with the under review period (about 2001-2014) should be 1972-2001.

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The vital scientific question is not "is there a hiatus/slowdown", but "how do the internal variability and external forcing combine and influence the surface temperature trend".