Reconciling warming trends

Abstract

Any divergence between real-world climate phenomena and prior expectations poses interesting science questions. The case of the apparent slow-down of warming since the record El Nino event in 1997/1998 is no exception. The global mean surface temperature trend was smaller 1 between 1997 and 2013 (0.07±0.08 °C per decade) than over the last 50 years (0.16 ± 0.02 °C per decade), highlighting questions about the mechanisms that regulate decadal variability in the Earth’s temperature. In addition, the warming trend in the most recent 15-year period is near the lower edge of the 5–95% range of projections from a collection of climate models that were part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Why most of the model simulations suggest more warming than has been observed is a second question that deserves further exploration. Short-term fluctuations in global mean surface temperature anomalies have been a perennial focus of public discussions related to climate change. We should expect to see climate changes, by definition, only in the long-term trends that average over stochastic weather and year-to-year fluctuations such as those associated with the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which favoured a cool La Nina phase in the past few years. On decadal timescales, global mean surface temperatures are expected to vary, too. One cause might be the chaotic internal variability of the coupled system of oceans and atmosphere, for example in the tropical Pacific Ocean 2