LOS ANGELES, April 17 (Xinhua) -- A team of scientists from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has confirmed the authenticity of global warming in their latest study released Wednesday.

For the research of the study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the scientists used data of the Earth's surface temperatures collected by a satellite-based infrared measurement system, also known as the Atmospheric Infra-Red Sounder (AIRS).

They then compared the measurements of the AIRS with the temperature data on the air two meters above the Earth's surface acquired by meteorological stations around the world.

On the sample period from 2003 to 2017, the study finds that there is a high level of consistency between the two datasets demonstrating that "the Earth's surface has been warming globally over this time period," with 2016, 2017, and 2015 being the warmest.

"Not only is this a further confirmation that the world is warming over the last two decades, which really isn't needed, but it is an independent confirmation that the magnitudes of the assessed changes are accurate, and possibly even a little underestimated," the study's co-author Gavin Schmidt from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies was quoted by the U.S. magazine Newsweek as saying.