A NASA study predicted that the recent lull in global warming does not indicate the world will stop heating up on track with previous estimates.
Researchers predict the Earth will undergo 20 percent more warming than temperature observations over the past 150 years led them to believe, a NASA news release reported.
The research was conducted by Drew Shindell, a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies .
Global temperatures increased at a rate of 0.22 Fahrenheit every decade since 1951; since 1998 warming dropped to 0.09 F per decade. Carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas, has continued to rise at a steady rate.
Some have suggested this data suggests the Earth is not as sensitive to greenhouse gases as was previously believed and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report that reduced their global warming predictions for the future.
To calculate climate change researchers look the the Earth's "transient climate response," which estimates how the Earth will respond to atmospheric carbon dioxide rates.
"The estimates for transient climate response range from near 2.52 F (1.4 C) offered by recent research, to the IPCC's estimate of 1.8 F (1.0 C). Shindell's study estimates a transient climate response of 3.06 F (1.7 C), and determined it is unlikely values will be below 2.34 F (1.3 C)," the news release reported.
The study also looked at how aerosols affect climate change in the Northern Hemisphere. Aerosols come from both natural and man-made sources; some have been known to cause a warming effect while others cool temperatures down.
Past studies have assumed aerosol concentrations are uniform around the globe
"Working on the IPCC, there was a lot of discussion of climate sensitivity since it's so important for our future," Shindell said. "The conclusion was that the lower end of the expected warming range was smaller than we thought before. That was a big discussion. Yet, I kept thinking, we know the Northern Hemisphere has a disproportionate effect, and some pollutants are unevenly distributed. But we don't take that into account. I wanted to quantify how much the location mattered."
The study suggests countries around the world need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
"I wish it weren't so," Shindell said. "but forewarned is forearmed."
