This shows the global mean temperatures since 1979. You can change the break point to view shorter trends. Notice that if you set the break point at 1997 you find that there was no warming at all between 1979 and 1997, and almost no warming between 1997 and today. Yet the underlying trend over the whole period shows about 0.5C warming. How is that possible? If there was no warming before 1997 and no warming since 1997 then how did we end up warming by 0.5C over the whole period?
USE SPACE to switch between the satellite record and the surface station record. The problem is more pronounced on the satellite record because it tends to exaggerate El Nino and La Nina events that drive large excursions from the mean.
