Global warming pause could be ending, UK says

The 17-year slowdown in global warming is likely coming to an end, United Kingdom scientists said Monday.

Forecasters with the UK’s Met Office released research Monday saying that various temporary weather phenomena, including the Pacific Ocean’s El Niño, are helping to push temperatures up.

{mosads}That will make 2015 and 2016 very warm with possibly record-breaking temperatures, officials said.

“Although we can’t say for sure that the slowdown in global warming is over, global temperatures are now rising again,” Adam Scaife, an author of the report, said in a statement from the Met Office.

Stephen Belcher, head of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Change, said the research shows a definite contribution of greenhouse gases on overall temperature patterns.

“We know natural patterns contribute to global temperature in any given year, but the very warm temperatures so far this year indicate the continued impact of increasing greenhouse gases,” Belcher said in the office’s statement.

“With the potential that next year could be similarly warm, it’s clear that our climate continues to change,” he said.

In June, the United States’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published research arguing that previous temperature readings were inaccurate and the global warming “pause” never happened.