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 (https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/#globalTemp). We see more heat being trapped in the oceans, and sea levels are rising. Look at the sea level record for the last decade (https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/). 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.”

NASA Goddard