Science Revives “The Hiatus”

Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.” —  Just five weeks after Science magazine prominently featured a paper proclaiming that the multidecadal slowdown in the rate of the earth’s average temperature rise—aka, the “pause” or “hiatus”—was but a figment of bad data, comes a new paper in Science magazine explaining the physical mechanisms that have led to the slowdown. Wait, what? You read it right. What Science laid to rest but a month ago, Science has now resurrected. Science (with a capital “S”), and those dedicated to it, should not be amused. But such is the nature of the game. Science the magazine is more interested in generating publicity for itself than in best serving Science the field—a point being increasingly raised by prominent scientific figures. The new paper, whose title even contains the dreaded H-word (“Recent hiatus caused by decadal shift in Indo-Pacific heating”), is authored by Veronica Nieves and colleagues from the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL). The paper itself is rather technical look at how the hiatus has manifested itself in various compilations of measurements (and models) of the ocean’s temperatures at depth. Never once do the authors act as if the hiatus didn’t exist, but rather present data showing h...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs