Ask A Climate Scientist – a Pause in Warming?

Is there a pause in global warming? This question was posed to Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Josh Willis as part of NASA's Ask A Climate Scientist campaign. Josh gets asked a lot if there has been a pause in global warming, because temperatures aren't increasing as fast as they were a decade ago. No, he says, global warming is definitely still increasing. We see more heat being trapped in the oceans, and sea levels are rising. Look at the sea level record for the last decade. It's going up like gangbusters, hasn't slowed down. There's not really a pause in global warming. Sometimes there's natural fluctuations and we warm up a little faster in one decade and a little slower in another decade, but global warming, human-caused climate change? Josh says, "that's definitely going right on up in there. We haven't slowed down at all."