Amid a barrage of scientific reports over the last several decades that predicted impending global warming due at least in part to man-made pollutants, the opposite has apparently happened, as the planet's overall temperature rise has slowed significantly.

New research says the earth's volcanoes are the reasons for the climatic contradictions.

A study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, and backed by the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change, says volcanic eruptions volcanoes caused the globe's average rate of warming each decade to dip from .31 degrees Fahrenheit in 1970 to .072 degrees Fahrenheit, starting in 1998 and lasting through 2012.

Research suggests a series of about 17 volcanic eruptions that started in 2000 spit out enough aerosols into the air to skew the anticipated acceleration of the earth's atmospheric warming.

The volcanic gas sulfur, for instance, tends to scatter incoming sunlight and, as a result, offsets the emissions generated by of heat-trapping gases.

Such volcanic ejections have accounted for approximately 15 percent of the difference between predicted and observed warming since 2000, but have also been largely ignored by many of those in the scientific community, Céline Bonfils, a climate scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and co-author of the study, explained to members of the media.

"This is a complex detective story," Benjamin Santer, a climate researcher also stationed at the Livermore lab, told Reuters. "Volcanoes are part of the answer but there's no factor that is solely responsible for the hiatus."

Research linking volcanoes to global cooling has actually been around for years

A 2013 study by a science team from the University of Colorado Boulder discovered amounts of sulfur dioxide jettisoned from the planet's surface ends up in the earth's stratosphere, where particles of the material reflect sunlight away back towards space.

As well, the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions including the 2011 eruption of Eritrea's Nabro, the 2008 eruption of Kasatochi in Alaska and Indonesia's Merapi eruption in 2010 could be why at least some scientists thing the globe's warming has halted.

Recent data suggests large and even small volcanic eruptions can dim the sun's light around the world.

"The biggest implication here is that scientists need to pay more attention to small and moderate volcanic eruptions when trying to understand changes in Earth's climate," Brian Toon, of CU-Boulder's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, said in a statement. "But overall these eruptions are not going to counter the greenhouse effect. Emissions of volcanic gases go up and down, helping to cool or heat the planet, while greenhouse gas emissions from human activity just continue to go up."