Global cooling

Global cooling is a decline in Earth’s average temperature. The term is especially associated with mid-20th-century cooling and contemporary concern that the decline might continue.

Global dimming: A decline in sunlight reaching Earth’s surface, driven largely by aerosols and clouds. Aerosol pollution reduced surface sunlight during part of the mid-20th-century cooling period.
Instrumental temperature record: Measurements of air and sea temperatures collected with instruments over time. The record establishes the observed cooling and its duration.
Global warming: A long-term increase in Earth’s average surface temperature. It describes the dominant global trend after mid-century cooling ended.
Scientific consensus on climate change: The broad agreement among climate scientists that human activities are causing recent global warming. The cooling episode is sometimes misrepresented as evidence against the later scientific consensus.
Aerosol: A suspension of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in a gas. Atmospheric aerosols can reflect sunlight and alter clouds, producing a cooling influence.
Global temperature record from 1850: A reconstruction of global surface temperature from thermometer and related observations beginning in the nineteenth century. It shows that mid-century cooling followed earlier warming and preceded renewed warming.
Ice age: A geological interval in which large ice sheets persist on Earth’s surface. An ice age is a far longer and larger climate state than the mid-century temperature decline.
Climate misinformation: False or misleading claims about climate science, its evidence, or its implications. Claims that scientists once uniformly predicted an imminent ice age distort the historical record.
Greenhouse effect: The warming of a planet’s surface and lower atmosphere as gases absorb and re-emit infrared radiation. Greenhouse-gas warming counteracted some of the cooling influence of mid-century aerosols.
Newsweek 1975 global cooling article: A 1975 Newsweek article describing scientific concern about global cooling and a possible approaching ice age. The article became a prominent example of how the concern entered public discussion.

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