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Climate Change : An Organization 's Criterion For A Legitimate Climate Data Set

Decent Essays

Since 1880 (when reliable record keeping began) the Earth’s average temperature has increased by 0.8-1.0 degree Celsius. At this small amount of warming familiar global weather patterns are being disrupted, the polar and greenland ice sheets are melting, storms are more intense and frequent and tropical diseases are spreading into higher latitudes and altitudes. Deniers of climate change will say that warming has stopped since 1998. There are a few flaws in this reasoning. First, “16 years of data does not meet the World Meteorological Organization’s criterion for a legitimate climate data set. The WMO defines at least a 30-year period for establishing a climate trend.” (Farmer 14) Although there has been a slight leveling out in the rate of warming since 1998, similar trends were observed in 1900, 1940, and 1960. Each time the warming slowed temporarily, then rebounded higher than before. Much recent research indicates that during these lulls the climate was still warming, with 93.4% of heat energy introduced to the system going into the ocean. Remember that the deep ocean is absorbing more heat than at any time since human civilization began. As discussed earlier the vast majority of Earth’s energy comes from the sun. Solar variances have been hypothesized to have a hand in the changing of the climate. However; solar irradiance has been closely monitored by NASA since 1975, and changes in solar output have not been nearly robust enough to cause such dramatic warming.

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