Global warming, ocean cooling

The so-called 'pause' in global warming over the last 15 years might be explained by cooler ocean water sucking the heat out of the air.

CO₂ keeps on rising. Source: NOAA

We know that carbon dioxide (CO₂) causes heat to be trapped in the air and we know that CO₂ levels have been increasing over the last 150 years. So the air should just keep heating up, right? But the temperature has hardly risen since 1998. Why?

Is there less heat coming from the sun? Are there more clouds (which cause cooling)?

What is the deal, Earth?

Some people say that the pause in warming is proof that humans are not causing the warming. Most scientists disagree with this.

But the temperature since 1998 hasn't changed much.
Source: NASA

And now researchers in California think they have worked it out. The surface of the tropical Pacific Ocean has been cooling as part of a natural cycle. This cooler water has been sucking heat out of the air. The researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography calculated that this cooling has been strong enough to stop the warming that we expected.

Andrew Dessler, a climatologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, told Nature News: “If this turns out to be correct then it seems very likely that the energy being trapped by greenhouse gases is indeed going into the deep ocean.”

Case closed!

Not really. This is only one study and while it sounds like a really great explanation it still needs to be confirmed by many other researchers before the scientific community will agree that this is the reason for the pause.

The scary thing about this research is that, if true, when the Pacific starts warming the air is going to get warmer and it might warm up very quickly. This could start any day now. Maybe it already has started!

As the Earth heats up we get more and more droughts and floods and fires and other sucky weather. People die, things we like - like houses and collectible figurines - get destroyed. Something to think about next time you are burning some coal.

Source: Nature News