Scientists have learned that a pause in a rising global temperature that originated in 1999 may last another 10 years.
According to BBC News, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released new research that suggests a long-spanning global warming pause is going to stretch further. The U.N.-appointed group of scientists said the average global temperature is increasing at a rate of 0.05C per decade from 1998 to 2012.
"The floats have been very revealing to us," lead researcher Ka-Kit Tung, a professor at the University of Washington, told BBC News. "I think the consensus at this point is that below 700 meters in the Atlantic and Southern oceans [they are] storing heat and not the Pacific."
Tung and his team published their study in the journal Science.
"The finding is a surprise, since the current theories had pointed to the Pacific Ocean as the culprit for hiding heat. But the data are quite convincing and they show otherwise," he told the Guardian. "We are not downplaying the role of the Pacific. They are both going on [the oceans having an effect on temperatures]; one is short term [the Pacific], one is long term [the Atlantic]."
Reto Knutti, a professor at the ETH Zurich, was not affiliated with the study but published his own review of several theories surrounding the pause and that the Atlantic Ocean has something to with it.
"I see the studies as complementary, and they both highlight that natural variability in ocean and atmosphere is important in modifying long term anthropogenic trends," he told BBC News. "A better understanding of those modes of variability is critical to understand past changes (including differences between models and observations during the hiatus period) as well as predicting the future, in particular in the near term and regionally, where variability dominates the forced changes from greenhouses gases."
