Summer 2014 Saw Warmest Ocean Temperatures Ever Recorded

Summer 2014 saw the warmest ocean temperatures ever recorded, according to a new report, proving that global warming is not slowing down.

But many people, including scientists, did think at one point that global warming had indeed taken a break. Greenhouse gas levels may have increased drastically in recent years, hitting a record high in 2013, but overall global tempratures have actually barely risen in the last 16 years, according to a recent study published in the journal Nature Geoscience back in August.

Some took this as proof that climate change wasn't a reality, and that man-made emissions from the burning of fossil fuels wasn't to blame for global warming. However, further research indicates that this "pause," referred to as the Global Warming Hiatus, was actually rooted in a natural cooling fluctuation, with the missing heat trapped deep in the Atlantic Ocean.

Now, as of April 2014, this hiatus period is over, and ocean warming has picked up speed again, according to analyses of ocean temperature datasets.

"Temperatures even exceed those of the record-breaking 1998 El Niño year," climate scientist Axel Timmermann of the University of Hawaii, lead researcher behind the new study, said in a press release.