UTSanDiego.com reports:
Cold Pacific waters may be acting as a kind of global air conditioner, dampening the warming effects of greenhouse gases, a recent Scripps study found.
The study, published this summer in the journal Nature, could explain the mysterious plateau in global average temperatures, which have remained flat for 15 years as carbon dioxide continued rising.
“This is the first time we can account for the flattening of temperatures in a sophisticated scientific model,” said Shang-Ping Xie, a lead author of the study and the Roger Revelle Chair in Environmental Science at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
They blame the warming pause on the oceans, but not the prior warming? Curious.