Scientists have come up with an explanation for the pause in global warming, which has long been a point of contention raised by climate change sceptics.
Over the past 15 years the rate of global warming has slowed, and more recently almost stalled.
Sceptics say the slowdown suggests warming is not as bad as first thought, while most climate scientists say it is just natural climate variability.
ABC News reports now an Australian-led team of researchers has found strong winds in the Pacific Ocean are most likely to be behind the hiatus.
University of New South Wales (UNSW) researcher Professor Matthew England said oceans were much more dominate in terms of their heat uptake.
“Obviously we have implications of that such as sea level rise,” Professor England told ABC News.
Professor England led a team of researchers from around the world that has come up with an explanation for why the oceans soak up the heat.
Their research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, has found the answer lies in stronger than usual trade winds whipping across the Pacific Ocean.
It was found the winds were churning the Pacific like a washing machine, bringing the deeper colder water to the surface and pushing the warmer water below.
“The phase we’re in of accelerated trade winds particularly lasts a couple of decades,” Professor England said.
“We’re about 12 to 13 years in to the most accelerated part of the wind field.
“It’s important to point out there’s a cycle we expect to reverse and when they do reverse back to their normal levels we’d expect global warming to kick in and start to rise.”
ABC News reports Professor England rejects the argument from sceptics that the slowdown suggests global warming is not as bad as first thought and that the climate models are not working.
“We want the community to have confidence in the climate models,” he said.
“They are very good but in this instance the wind acceleration has been that strong and that much stronger than what the models projected.”
Scientists used satellite measurements and an array of floats in the Pacific to observe two-decades worth of temperature and current information.
Dr Steve Rintoul from CSIRO said understanding the oceans was the key to understanding climate change.
“What’s not commonly understood is that when we talk about global warming we mean ocean warming,” Dr Rintoul said.
“Over the past 50 years, 90 per cent of the extra heat that’s been stored by the earth is found in the ocean.
“So if we want to track how climate is changing we need to be looking in the ocean to understand it,” Dr Rintoul added.
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Does anyone actully believe this garbage? Sounds like a lot of hot-air to me…