NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies just issued a summary update to their paper 'Global Surface Temperature Change', which was published in the Reviews of Geophysics. In the summary, which was led by Dr. James Hansen, a number of important points are made...... 1. Contrary to a popular misconception, the rate of warming has not declined, according to NASA.
2. Record high global 12-month running-mean temperature for the period with instrumental data was reached in 2010. The new record temperature in 2010 is particularly meaningful because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect. 3. Satellite-observed nightlights are used to identify measurement stations located in extreme darkness and adjust temperature trends of urban and peri-urban stations for non-climatic factors, verifying that urban effects on analyzed global change are small.
4. Communication of the status of global warming to the public has always been hampered by weather variability. Lay people's perception tends to be strongly influenced by the latest local fluctuation.
5. Other obstacles to public communication include the media's difficulty in framing longterm problems as 'news', a preference for sensationalism, a generally low level of familiarity with basic science, and a preference for 'balance' in every story.
6. Polls indicate that the attacks on scientists have been effective in causing many members of the public to doubt the reality or seriousness of global warming.
7. Temperature data are too useful for scientific studies to be kept under wraps, so NASA GISS will continue to make the data available on a monthly basis. However, there is a practical disadvantage to this in that it allows any data flaws to be interpreted and misrepresented as machinations.
8. Main task is to describe ongoing global temperature change with as much clarity and insight as NASA GISS can.
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Note: NASA GISS comments here about communication of this climate change science to the public are their opinion.
The above images are courtesy of NASA GISS and authors J. Hansen, R. Ruedy, M. Sato and K. L