Ocean aborbing extra heat

This title and description of this article about climate scientist Kevin Trenberth's research refers to "the pause in global warming". It more correctly refers to "the apparent pause" later on.

Since this article was published, there have been new findings that the poles are warming more than had been realized, because there are not many measuring instruments in those regions.

So we are in a part of the ocean temperature cycle where atmospheric temperatures would be going down, but they are at either holding steady or still increasing. And this cooling phase will not last forever. When it ends, we can expect to be really walloped.

http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/global-warming-pause-due-to-pacific-says-trenberth.html

06.12.2013
by Leon Clifford

Leading climate scientist Kevin Trenberth has told reportingclimatescience.com that he believes the pause in global warming may be caused by long term changes in the Pacific Ocean.


Trenberth and colleague John Fasullo argue in a new scientific paper that the massive El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event that occurred in 1997 and 1998 triggered the pause. They say that the El Nino caused a large loss of heat from the deep ocean to the sea surface that resulted in a cooling of the oceans. Since then the deep ocean has been absorbing heat back from the upper ocean and so cooling the atmosphere.

The implication is that the heat being absorbed from the atmosphere by the oceans has offset the underlying and ongoing warming of the atmosphere due to green house gases. As the deep ocean waters have slowly warmed they have taken heat from the upper ocean which has then cooled the atmosphere. This is the cause of the apparent hiatus in global warming that has manifested itself as a halt in the rise in global mean atmospheric temperatures seen in the second half of the 20th century.

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The Pacific Ocean appears to account for the majority of the decadal variability... Nevertheless, the events in the Pacific undoubtedly also affect the Atlantic, Indian, and Southern Oceans as the system acts collectively to equilibrate to these changes in the flow of energy,” they write.

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Each phase of these PDO cycles last between 20 and 30 years, according to the historical record. Positive phases of the PDO took place from 1923 to 1942 and from 1976 to 1998, and negative phases from 1943 to 1976 and after 1999, according to data.

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“Global warming has not stopped; it is merely manifested in different way,” the authors state.