Quotable Warming Hiatus Quotes

From our old blog (9/7/2014) that was tragically hidden from view by the Gods of Google.

Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 5th July, 2005:

The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant….”Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 7th May, 2009‘Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’__________________


Dr. Judith L. Lean – Geophysical Research Letters – 15 Aug 2009“…

This lack of overall warming is analogous to the period from 2002 to 2008 when decreasing solar irradiance also countered much of the anthropogenic warming…”


Dr. Kevin Trenberth – CRU emails – 12 Oct. 2009

“Well, I have my own article on where the heck is global warming…..The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

Dr. Mojib Latif – Spiegel – 19th November 2009

“At present, however, the warming is taking a break,”…….”There can be no argument about that,”

.Jochem Marotzke – Spiegel – 19th November 2009

“It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,”….”We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”

Dr. Phil Jones – BBC – 13th February 2010


“I’m a scientist trying to measure temperature. If I registered that the climate has been cooling I’d say so. But it hasn’t until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend.”

Dr. Phil Jones – BBC – 13th February 2010[Q] B –

Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming”[A] “Yes, but only just”.

Prof. Shaowu Wang et al – Advances in Climate Change Research –2010“…

The decade of 1999-2008 is still the warmest of the last 30 years, though the global temperature increment is near zero;…”

Dr. B. G. Hunt – Climate Dynamics – February 2011

“Controversy continues to prevail concerning the reality of anthropogenically-induced climatic warming. One of the principal issues is the cause of the hiatus in the current global warming trend.”

Dr. Robert K. Kaufmann – PNAS – 2nd June 2011

“…..it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008…..”

Dr. Gerald A. Meehl – Nature Climate Change – 18th September2011

“There have been decades, such as 2000–2009, when the observed globally averaged surface-temperature time series shows little increase or even a slightly negative trend1 (a hiatus period)….”

Met Office Blog – Dave Britton (10:48:21) – 14 October 2012

“We agree with Mr Rose that there has been only a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century. As stated in our response, this is 0.05 degrees Celsius since 1997 equivalent to 0.03 degrees Celsius per decade. ”Source: metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012

Dr. James Hansen – NASA GISS – 15 January 2013

“The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing.”

Dr Doug Smith – Met Office – 18 January 2013

“The exact causes of the temperature standstill are not yet understood,” says climate researcher Doug Smith from the Met Office.[Translated by Philipp Mueller from Spiegel Online]

Dr. Virginie Guemas – Nature Climate Change – 7 April 2013

“…Despite a sustained production of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, the Earth’s mean near-surface temperature paused its rise during the 2000–2010 period…”

Dr. Judith Curry – House of Representatives Subcommittee on Environment – 25 April 2013

” If the climate shifts hypothesis is correct, then the current flat trend in global surface temperatures may continue for another decade or two,…”

Dr. Hans von Storch – Spiegel – 20 June 2013

“…the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero….If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models….”

Professor Masahiro Watanabe – Geophysical Research Letters – 28 June 2013

“The weakening of k commonly found in GCMs seems to be an inevitable response of the climate system to global warming, suggesting the recovery from hiatus in coming decades.”

Met Office – July 2013

The recent pause in global warming, part 3: What are the implications for projections of future warming?………..Executive summary The recent pause in global surface temperature rise does not materially alter the risks of substantial warming of the Earth by the end of this century. ”Source: metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/3/r/Paper3_Implications_for_projections.pdf

Professor Rowan Sutton – Independent – 22 July 2013

“Some people call it a slow-down, some call it a hiatus, some people call it a pause. The global average surface temperature has not increased substantially over the last 10 to 15 years,”

Dr. Kevin Trenberth – NPR – 23 August 2013

They probably can’t go on much for much longer than maybe 20 years, and what happens at the end of these hiatus periods, is suddenly there’s a big jump [in temperature] up to a whole new level and you never go back to that previous level again,”

Dr. Yu Kosaka et. al. – Nature – 28 August 2013

“Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling despite the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the annual-mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty-first century…”

Professor Anastasios Tsonis – Daily Telegraph – 8 September 2013\

“We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has stopped.”

Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth – Nature News Feature – 15 January 2014

“The 1997 to ’98 El Niño event was a trigger for the changes in the Pacific, and I think that’s very probably the beginning of the hiatus,” says Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist…

Dr. Gabriel Vecchi – Nature News Feature – 15 January 2014

“A few years ago you saw the hiatus, but it could be dismissed because it was well within the noise,” says Gabriel Vecchi, a climate scientist…“Now it’s something to explain.”…..

Professor Matthew England – ABC Science – 10 February 2014

“Even though there is this hiatus in this surface average temperature, we’re still getting record heat waves, we’re still getting harsh bush fires…..it shows we shouldn’t take any comfort from this plateau in global average temperatures.”