A team of researchers has predicted that global warming will halt for up to 15 years, as oscillating ocean currents cause the planet to cool slightly.

Researchers: Global Warming Halts Until 2020

New research indicates no warming for next 15 years.

Previous articles in DailyTech highlighted the views of scientists who believe another Ice Age approaches, the rapid temperature decline in 2007, and the official prediction of the United Nations that the planet will continue cooling in 2008. Now, a team of researchers has predicted that global warming will halt for up to 15 years, as oscillating ocean currents cause the planet to cool slightly.

In a paper appearing the journal Nature, the scientists study changes in SST (sea surface temperatures) caused by the Atlantic Mutidecadal Oscillation and the Meridional Overturning Oscillation. A larger, slower-acting version of the better-known El Nino/La Nina oscillation, the MOC is expected to weaken over the next 15-20 years, causing cooling throughout Europe and North America. Pacific temperatures are expected to remain flat.

The actual cause of the MOC is unknown, but its cycles last from 60 to 70 years and, by this new research, it appears to have a much stronger effect on climate than previously thought. It may also explain why global temperatures rose during the first half of the 20th Century, before beginning a 30-year cooling trend in 1940.

The most intriguing part of this research is the scientists themselves. Led by Noel Keenlyside, the team from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science and the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology have not in the past been global warming skeptics. In fact, they've been solidly on the side of catastrophic anthropogenic warming.

Physicist and ex-Harvard professor Lubos Motl, who was not involved in the research, says the discovery of such a large, previously unknown factor indicates a "critical flaw" in modeling predictions, "no paper so far has even properly combined the effects of ENSO, PDO, and AMO". Motl believes the research indicates that IPCC climate predictions will be incorrect for as much as 70 years in the future.

However, Richard Wood, from the U.K.'s Hadley Center for Climate Change, says that it's "important to make sure we don't get distracted" from the long-term problem of greenhouse gas emissions. Wood also cautions that such modeling is in its infancy, and the results may change.

[link to www.dailytech.com]