Suggestions by climate change skeptics that ocean cooling put global warming on hiatus more than a decade ago were based on faulty measurements of seawater temperatures, a new study led by a UC Berkeley researcher confirms.

Zeke Hausfather, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and analyst with the nonprofit climate science group Berkeley Earth, and his research team concluded that temperatures during the past 15 years rose just as they did in the latter half of the 20th century.

Their findings, published Wednesday in the online journal Science Advances, are the latest to debunk the assertion that there was little or no warming between 1998 and 2012.

A group of scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was the first to say two years ago that such conclusions were based on skewed temperature data. The federal team’s revised figures, showing a significant spike in ocean temperatures in the 21st century, drew rebuke from skeptics who accused the government of fixing the numbers.

“NOAA got it right,” Hausfather said in an interview. “They weren’t cooking the books for political purposes. They were doing their best to untangle data, and they ended up getting it right.”

Hausfather — who worked with researchers at Berkeley Earth, the University of York in England, George Mason University and NASA — verified NOAA’s updated figures by reviewing the historical temperature record. His team looked at 20 years’ worth of data from satellites, robotic floats and buoys.

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Just as the federal agency had concluded, Hausfather found that 20th-century ocean data relied too heavily on measurements taken by ships, where water was drawn in through the engine room and was generally warmer as a result. As buoys began to replace ship measurements in the late 1990s, lower temperature readings were recorded, fueling the belief that the oceans were not warming as fast.

Even the International Panel on Climate Change, a science group commissioned by the United Nations, initially said the ocean data showed a slowdown in the planet’s temperature rise. The panel has since revised its thinking.

The correction offered by NOAA in 2015, and now confirmed by Hausfather, indicates that oceans have warmed 0.22 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1997, nearly twice as much as what earlier data suggested.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander