The Science is Unsettled

Possible answer to "one of the biggest questions in climate science" [bold added]:

why, since the turn of the century, average surface-air temperatures on Earth have not risen, even though the concentration in the atmosphere of heat-trapping carbon dioxide has continued to go up.

Drs. Chen Xianyao of the Ocean University of China, Qingdao, and Ka-Kit Tung of the University of Washington, Seattle, have uncovered evidence that an immense amount of heat is being stored in the Atlantic and Southern (aka Antarctic) Oceans, dampening atmospheric temperature increases over the past decade.

Subsurface temperatures are increasing faster than the temperature on the surface or in the atmosphere. Their study raises some important questions, such as:

How does this mechanism work?

Why doesn't the differential manifest in the larger Pacific and Indian Oceans?

When will the process reverse (Economist: "when it does, global warming will resume.")?

This amateur's opinion: the results from the global warming models aren't necessarily wrong, but they do not reliably incorporate important inputs that affect the Earth's temperatures, such as ocean-heat transfer mechanisms and sunspot activity.

Waiting for more information is often a delaying tactic, but leaping to action before obtaining and evaluating important information can have hazardous consequences, too.

Atlantic vs Pacific ocean surface/sub-surface temperature differentials. (Economist graphic)

© 2014 Stephen Yuen