A tweet archived here claims that global warming stopped and the planet is currently cooling since 2015. The tweet first shared on a popular account was republished here, here and here, citing a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Background
Global warming, linked to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases was declared a global emergency by the United Nations (UN). The UN Secretary-General António Guterres in March 2022 warned that the world is on the brink of a climate catastrophe.
Verification
The NOAA report the tweet refers to analyses global temperatures in the month of January 2023. The report found that January 2023 is the seventh-warmest January in NOAA’s 174-year record.
In a fact-check by Piga Firimbi here, the world’s hottest year was 2016. High temperatures were also witnessed in 2022, as it ranks as the year when oceans were the hottest, and the fifth warmest year on record.
Conversely, the NOAA report dispels claims that global warming has stopped. It notes that “If yearly emissions continue to increase rapidly, as they have since 2000, models project that by the end of this century, global temperature will be at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 1901-1960 average, and possibly as much as 10.2 degrees warmer.”
Verdict
Claims that global warming has stopped and temperatures have been falling since 2015 are FALSE.
This fact-check was produced by Africa Uncensored with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck, the International Fact-Checking Network, and the African Fact-Checking Alliance network.
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