A "lull" in global warming over the next decade should not be misinterpreted as meaning that the greenhouse effect has stopped, German researchers warn.| "That last research grant ain't gonna last our whole lives, ya know!!!! We won't stand for a "lull" in our gravy train, capische?" |
North Atlantic sea surface temperatures may actually decrease slightly in the next decade, according to the researchers with Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel. Their paper also suggests global surface temperatures may not actually increase either. But they caution that their findings should not be interpreted to mean that global warming has stopped.
On the contrary, the "lull" is only a temporary phenomenon associated with ocean currents, writes Dr. Noel Keenlyside in the report published in Nature. The effect of rising fossil fuel emissions will mean that warming will accelerate again after 2015 when natural trends in the oceans veer back towards warming, according to the German researchers' computer model. "Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that," Keenlyside says.| "Coincidentally, our mortgages are scheduled to reset in 2015. Strictly coincidentally." |
The new computer model attempts to predict what might happen to the climate of the North Atlantic over a period of decades. It suggests the temperature of the sea and Europe and North America may cool slightly. The Kiel researchers say the North Atlantic has variability on a 70 to 80-year cycle and the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), a giant "conveyor belt" which brings warm water northwards into the area, had an important role to play in driving those fluctuations.
When the circulation is strong, it creates warmer temperatures. |