Average temperatures not increased for last 11 years: Research

LONDON: Amid stepped up efforts to curb global warming, a recent research has revealed that average temperatures have not increased for over a decade.

Average temperatures have not increased for over a decade and the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998, according to a research published by the Royal Society.

For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures and our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise, it said.

Climate change skeptics argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly but a the research has ruled out solar influences on increase in temperature, a BBC report said.

"Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.