But the WaPo frets that the oceans may burp up the warming they ate.
If the oceans are indeed the reason for the pause, that’s not comforting news, since that extra heat should eventually rise to the Earth’s surface in the years ahead, leading to much hotter temperatures.
If the oceans warm wouldn’t that increase water vapor in the air resulting in clouds that would in turn reflect light back into space and serve as a negative feedback?
Presumably if the heat uptake of the oceans had accelerated over the past decade this would have caused a noticable increase in the rate of sea level rise over the period in question, and there is no evidence of this..
The tremendous mass of the oceans could be absorbing heat, except that the tracking we have doesn’t indicate the oceans are warming. Speculating about a mechanism isn’t the same as proving it operates.
“Global warming” hasn’t “slowed lately”, it’s been stopped for roughly as long as it seems to have gone on. Up to about 1980, the forecast was Ice Age; between 1980 and 1998ish we have some indicators of warming, but since 1998 we seem to have retreated to the point of about 1980. All without actually reducing human CO2 emissions.
Doesn’t heat rise and cold fall?