Scientists are not only having trouble explaining why global surface temperatures did not warm for 15 years in the 21st century, they still have not adequately explained why there was an even longer 30-year “grand hiatus” in global warming during the mid-20th century.
“The climate models making dire predictions of warming in the 21st century are the same models that predicted too much warming in the early 21st century, and can’t explain the warming from 1910-1945 or the mid-century grand hiatus,” Dr. Judith Curry writes in a Wednesday op-ed published in The Financial Post.
The so-called “grand hiatus” was a period from 1945 to 1975 where the world stopped warming, and even cooled slightly, despite carbon dioxide emissions rapidly rising. Scientists have thus far been unable to explain why there was no warming even though global warming theory predicts there would have been warming.
“The mid-century period of slight cooling from 1945 to 1975 – referred to as the “grand hiatus” – also has not been satisfactorily explained,” Curry writes. Curry is a climatologist at Georgia Tech University. She has published more than 130 peer-reviewed papers on the climate.
