Apparently two extra years, ‘the warmest on record’ (though by far less than the raw data error-bars), can somehow erase the 15 year hiatus in a warming trend explicitly described by the IPCC’s AR5 in 2013. I honestly expected many more years before having to update my analysis comparing the climate models with the observational data.
James Corbett was kind enough to respond to my question about this, as he has done more research into the manipulation of climate data, which I avoided for the purposes of these essays.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2015/noaa-analysis-journal-science-no-slowdown-in-global-warming-in-recent-years.html
https://www.corbettreport.com/the-global-warming-pause-explained/
https://www.corbettreport.com/what-is-the-average-global-temperature/