Did global warming stop in 1998?
Monday, April 8, 2024
By Sue Bin Park
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While 1998 was an abnormally warm year, annual average temperatures have trended steadily upward in the decades since.
As a strong El Nino year, 1998 featured a significant spike in global temperatures. El Nino is the warm phase of a cyclic climatic pattern where sea temperatures in parts of the Pacific swing higher or lower than average. The 1998 El Nino stood out above the rising temperature trendline that is due to manmade global warming.
However, the long-term upward trend in globally-averaged temperatures has continued. In the past quarter century, the top ten hottest years on record have all occurred since 2010.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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Skeptical Science is a non-profit science education organization. Our goal is to remove a roadblock to climate action by building public resilience against climate misinformation. We achieve this by publishing debunking of climate myths as well as providing resources for educators, communicators, scientists, and the general public. Skeptical Science was founded and is led by John Cook, a Senior Research Fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne.
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