How not to detect warming acceleration

Enter a term in the search box to find its definition. Use the controls in the far right panel to increase or decrease the number of terms automatically displayed (or to completely turn that feature off). Whether global warming has accelerated (and how much it has accelerated) is one of the livelier debates in climate science at the moment. The physical case for it is fairly strong: cooling aerosol pollution has fallen substantially over the past two decades while greenhouse gas emissions remain near record highs. The observed rate of warming over the past decade is roughly double what it was over the prior four decades. But showing that this speed-up is statistically distinguishable from the normal year-to-year wiggles of the climate has proven surprisingly hard.