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Cause of Global Warming 'Hiatus' Found Deep In the Atlantic
vinces99 writes with news about a study that may account for a slowdown in air temperature rises. Following rapid warming in the late 20th century, this century has so far seen surprisingly little increase in the average temperature at the Earth's surface. More than a dozen theories have now been proposed for the so-called global warming hiatus, ranging from air pollution to volcanoes to sunspots. New research from the University of Washington shows the heat absent from the surface is plunging deep in the north and south Atlantic Ocean, and is part of a naturally occurring cycle. The study is published in Science. Subsurface ocean warming explains why global average air temperatures have flatlined since 1999, despite greenhouse gases trapping more solar heat at the Earth's surface. "Every week there's a new explanation of the hiatus," said corresponding author Ka-Kit Tung, a UW professor of applied mathematics and adjunct faculty member in atmospheric sciences. "Many of the earlier papers had necessarily focused on symptoms at the surface of the Earth, where we see many different and related phenomena. We looked at observations in the ocean to try to find the underlying cause." What they found is that a slow-moving current in the Atlantic, which carries heat between the two poles, sped up earlier this century to draw heat down almost a mile (1,500 meters). Most previous studies focused on shorter-term variability or particles that could block incoming sunlight, but they could not explain the massive amount of heat missing for more than a decade.
Regardless of whether this particular theory holds out to be right or wrong it certainly cast a lot of doubt on the models in general. How many other un-modeled factors or phenomena are there in this complex system?
A little...or a lot? I'm betting on a lot.
Yes, religions have been using that trick for hundreds of years to escape questions.
No, what religions do is torture and murder heretics. Science just doesn't pay attention to them until they meet higher standards of evidence, proportionate to the level of heresy. Tiny bit different.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Your linked study really just shows what everyone could already see - the climate models are missing something. This of course isn't a surprise; they're missing lots of things, many of which are called out in the study (ENSO, AMO, volcanic activity, unexpected stratospheric aerosol variation or solar variation, etc). .
Heathen! Heretic! Barbarian! Denier!
The science is settled! It's been settled! The models have been perfect forever!
So sayeth Al Gore! So it is, was, and ever shall be!
Amen.
And know we might have am idea of where that missing heat went... Thereby possibly being able to improve the models.
How do you improve on perfection? The SCIENCE WAS SETTLED! Didn't you get the memo?