In models, the presence of these cooler waters over a huge region (the area of the Pacific makes up about 8.2% of the Earth’s surface) serves to absorb heat from the atmosphere and thus slow down the underlying warming process. If the phenomenon is representative of reality, the team’s calculations show that it has caused the planet’s overall average temperature to dip by about 0.27°F over the past decade, combating the effects of rising carbon dioxide emissions and causing the apparent pause in warming. This isn’t the first localized climate-related event to have effects on the progression of climate change as a whole. Last week, other researchers determined that in 2010 and 2011, massive floods in Australia slowed down the global rise in sea level that would have been been expected from observed rates of glacier melting and the thermal expansion of sea water. In many cases, it seems, the subtle and complex dynamics of the planet’s climate systems can camouflage the background trend of warming, caused by human activity. But that trend is continuing regardless, and so the most obvious impact of this new finding is a disconcerting one: the Pacific will eventually return to normal temperatures, and as a result, global warming will continue. The scientists don’t know exactly when this will happen, but records indicate that the Pacific goes through this longer-term cycle every decade or so, meaning that the era of an abnormally-cool Pacific will probably soon be over. Perhaps most distressing, the study implies that the extreme warming experienced in recent years in some areas—including much of the U.S.—is actually less warming than would be expected given the amount of carbon dioxide we’ve released. Other regions that haven’t seen much warming yet, meanwhile, are likely in line for some higher temperatures soon. Read more: blogs.smithsonianmag/science/2013/08/why-global-warming-has-paused-and-why-it-will-soon-start-up-again/#ixzz2dOyg7ROn Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
Posted on: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 23:00:50 +0000
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