TalkClimateChange

“Global warming may ’stop’, scientists predict.” - Daily Telegraph

That’s one way of summarising the paper recently published in the scientific journal Nature documenting recent research by the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany.

This paper has attracted a lot of media attention on both sides of the debate, with some parties using it as proof that greens have been ringing the alarm bells unnecessarily, and other parties defensively disputing the results and raising concerns that the predicted delay in temperature rise will take the wind out of the sails of recent climate treaty progress. (See Daryl’s post on the challenged made by RealClimate.)

Just in case anybody managed to miss it - here are some of the statements made by the report and it’s authors which demonstrate how parts of the report can, and have been taken completely out of context:

“Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [manmade] warming.“

versus:

“The results were just the initial findings from a new computer model of how the oceans behave over decades and it would be wholly misleading to infer that global warming, in the sense of the enhanced greenhouse effect from increased carbon emissions, had gone away.“

I’ve found the whole debacle interesting, and valuable, for the following reasons:

• The research represents a refinement of existing climate modelling capability - refinements to climate models are desperately needed to improve our decision making capability, as many models are way too approximate to help make sensible decisions about priorities
• The wide spread nature of the reporting brings the above issue to the fore - an issue which has been sorely under-represented by many lobbies
• The research clearly separates the concepts of natural variability from human induced climate change. A better public understanding of this separation might help get rid of some of the sillier arguments, such as “it’s freezing today, global warming must be a scam.”
• The study clearly shows that despite what may appear to be a reduction in the rate of warming since 1998, we are still facing a warming climate

However, not everybody was pleased with the research, and the way in which it has been reported: The gamblers at Real Climate have written “Why did we propose a bet on this forecast? Mainly because we were concerned by the global media coverage which made it appear as if a coming pause in global warming was almost a given fact, rather than an experimental forecast. This could backfire against the whole climate science community if the forecast turns out to be wrong.“

Whilst Climate Progress state that the original paper “has, in fact, been widely misreported” (that means you, Daily Telegraph) based partly on discussions with the lead author, claiming that the report is consistent with the following statements:
• The “coming decade” (2010 to 2020) is poised to be the warmest on record, globally.
• The coming decade is poised to see faster temperature rise than any decade since the authors’ calculations began in 1960.

Ultimately, the research does what it’s supposed to - drive the current state of knowledge forwards. If it is correct, then we know more now than we did before. If it’s found wrong, it will have motivated somebody else to challenge it and prove why, raising the bar once more.

Some will miss-quote the results, and claim that global warming is finished. Others will call those people names. Politicians may use certain gaps in the argument as excuses to delay any real decisions - which they are delaying as far as possible anyway.

Business as usual then..