Global cooling was a
conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the
Earth's surface and atmosphere culminating in a period of extensive
glaciation. This hypothesis had little support in the scientific community, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s and
press reports that did not accurately reflect the full scope of the scientific climate literature, which showed a larger and faster-growing body of literature projecting future warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. The current
scientific opinion on climate change is that the
Earth has not durably cooled, but underwent
global warming throughout the 20th century.