Small Volcanoes Restraining A Much Faster Warming Planet, For Now

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/24/3322721/small-volcanoes-global-warming/

By Joe Romm on February 24, 2014

How much faster would surface temperatures be warming if not for various (mostly) natural cooling factors? That’s a question raised by the umpteenth study revealing climate models have been under-representing key factors — in this case small volcanic eruptions since 2000 — that appear to slow the rate of surface temperature warming.

We know from a major December study by Cowtan and Way that surface temperatures have not in fact slowed down. The apparent slowdown is largely due to the fact that we don’t have permanent weather stations in the Arctic Ocean — the place where global warming has been the greatest. So the UK’s Met Office decision to use date that excludes this area has led to a lowballing of actual temperature rise.

The recent reanalysis using satellite data to fill the gaps finds little slowdown in warming: [see link above for graph]

This is especially worrisome because several recent studies have found factors that are keeping surface temps from warming even faster — which means when these factors abate, accelerated warming will return with a vengeance, like a climate boomerang. As a recent study of the impact of anomalous trade winds concluded, when those winds stop boosting ocean warming, “global temperatures look set to rise rapidly.”

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When there is a La Nina (we’ve had a bunch recently), heat is taken up by the oceans but extra heat is re-released during El Nino. So, we can expect that the next El Nino will result in record surface temperatures. Of course, this doesn’t prove global warming — we proved that years ago.

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Those who point to the faux pause as a reason for delaying action on climate change have it backwards. Recent planetary warming hasn’t slowed down, and to the extent surface temperatures have been affected, we should be anticipating a boomerang period of sped up warming within a decade or so. The time to act was a long time ago, but now is infinitely better than later.