Global warming? Next decade could be cooler
You do understand the difference
between climate and weather - right?
After decades of research that sought, and found,
evidence of a human influence on the earth’s climate, climatologists are
beginning to shift to a new and similarly daunting enterprise: creating
decade-long forecasts for climate, just as meteorologists routinely generate
weeklong forecasts for weather.
One of the first attempts to look ahead a decade, using computer simulations and measurements of ocean temperatures, predicts a slight cooling of Europe and North America, probably related to shifting currents and patterns in the oceans…
The authors stressed that the pause in warming represented only a temporary blunting of the centuries of rising temperatures that scientists have projected if carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases continue accumulating in the atmosphere…
Other researchers, including NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, reported separately on April 21 that a slowly fluctuating oscillation in Pacific Ocean temperatures had already shifted into its cool phase, a condition that also is thought to exert an overall temporary cooling of the climate.
These natural variations can also amplify warming, and that is likely to happen on and off in future decades as well, experts say.
Nutballs - of course - will not comprehend the word “temporary”. But, then, the differences between climate and weather don’t always sink into the brains of those who use the Weather Channel as their prime source for meteorologic science.
One of the first attempts to look ahead a decade, using computer simulations and measurements of ocean temperatures, predicts a slight cooling of Europe and North America, probably related to shifting currents and patterns in the oceans…
The authors stressed that the pause in warming represented only a temporary blunting of the centuries of rising temperatures that scientists have projected if carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases continue accumulating in the atmosphere…
Other researchers, including NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, reported separately on April 21 that a slowly fluctuating oscillation in Pacific Ocean temperatures had already shifted into its cool phase, a condition that also is thought to exert an overall temporary cooling of the climate.
These natural variations can also amplify warming, and that is likely to happen on and off in future decades as well, experts say.
Nutballs - of course - will not comprehend the word “temporary”. But, then, the differences between climate and weather don’t always sink into the brains of those who use the Weather Channel as their prime source for meteorologic science.
Posted: Thu - May 1, 2008 at 09:41 AM