Jan 20, 2016 09:33 AM EST By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

A team of researchers may have just debunked the mysterious global warming hiatus of the past few years that had some crying "hoax."

According to Gizmodo, the researchers found the Earth's oceans to be the source of warming since the start of the 2000s. While the Earth's rising climate appeared to level out, the oceans - and its deepest depths in particular - warmed at an accelerated pace.

The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

"In recent decades the ocean has continued to warm substantially, and with time the warming signal is reaching deeper into the ocean," study lead author Peter Gleckler, a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said in a press release.

The deep ocean is important for regulating the planet's temperature, as that region is as close to the Earth's core as can be without actually drilling into the crust. Like a ripple, a small change in such a deep part of the ocean has a much larger effect when it reaches the surface.

"The heat that entered the atmosphere is now accounted for, and this means that impacts are reaching deeper into the water column," Glen Gawarkiewicz, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, told Gizmodo. "It is fairly incredible how much how much heat has gone into the oceans over the last 20 years or so."

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