Pirate's Cove

Is this a new excuse, or a miss-mash of previous Excuseifying?

(phys.org) Heat stored in the western Pacific Ocean caused by an unprecedented strengthening of the equatorial trade winds appears to be largely responsible for the hiatus in surface warming observed over the past 13 years.

New research published today in the journal Nature Climate Change indicates that the dramatic acceleration in winds has invigorated the circulation of the Pacific Ocean, causing more heat to be taken out of the atmosphere and transferred into the subsurface ocean, while bringing cooler waters to the surface.

“Scientists have long suspected that extra ocean heat uptake has slowed the rise of global average temperatures, but the mechanism behind the hiatus remained unclear” said Professor Matthew England, lead author of the study and a Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Good news, though

“But the heat uptake is by no means permanent: when the trade wind strength returns to normal – as it inevitably will – our research suggests heat will quickly accumulate in the atmosphere. So global temperatures look set to rise rapidly out of the hiatus, returning to the levels projected within as little as a decade.”

This is all very cute: they’ve managed to blame Mankind for increasing the temperature of the Atlantic, which super-charges the Pacific trade winds, causing the surface warmth to hide in the deep oceans (snicker), and this leads to fewer El Nino events, so, man is messing with natural events. But, hey, nature will eventually reassert itself, and we’ll all of a sudden have massive warming. Which is supposedly still caused by Mankind, ya know!

Cult.