Highly read on iopscience.iop.org in December

Temperature data collected since 1990 are in good agreement with model-based estimates of global warming made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and his colleagues removed short-term temperature fluctuations or 'noise', which result from events such as volcanic eruptions, from a 1980–2011 time-series of annual global temperatures. The adjusted warming trend of 0.16 °C per decade closely matches the projections made by the IPCC in its reports in 2001 and 2007.

The global sea level, however, has since 1993 been rising 60% faster than anticipated. Future sea-level rise could exceed even the highest value — some 60 centimetres by the end of the century — projected by the IPCC in its 2007 report, the team cautions.

Environ. Res. Lett. 7, 044035 (2012)