A new study appears in Nature today that attempts to model the regional temperature effects of global warming during coming decades. As I will get into in a moment, it should concern anyone who wants serious action on global warming.
Long-term, the models all find that the North Atlantic region has warmed by 2 to 4 Celsius degrees by the year 2050. But in the short term, during the next decade, there are far different effects. Study author Noel Keenlyside and his colleagues write:
Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.
The image below shows the three possible trends in northern Europe winter temperatures from 1996 to 2050, as forecast by a climate model, for three different but plausible initial conditions:
If the climate scientists are correct, this should concern environmentalists and those would like to see Western societies lead efforts to address and mitigate the effects of future warming.
Why? Because at the very time the Western world will need to implement changes that will address global warming, cities such as London, Paris, Berlin and Washington, D.C. could have relatively moderate weather.
The climate scientists will interpret this as a hiccup in the recent warming trend, and find explanations (such as a slowing Thermohaline circulation) but it’s hard to see the general public interpreting all the nuances.
People’s natural confusion of weather and climate is one of the things that makes this hard. I haven’t seen the study yet. My guess is that, when we hit the next El Nino, that the background level of warming we’ve now got, added onto an El Nino boost, should really be enough to set new global records, and make people take notice. But you’re right, if it’s a tough winter in Washington, that makes a difference. One of the things in 1988, when (James) Hansen was talking, it was 100 degrees right outside the hearing room and it had been for two weeks. It does make it tougher.
If such a moderation in temperature trends does persist in the North Atlantic, it will provide ammunition for skeptics, to be sure, and probably will mire down efforts to craft a reasonable policy to address global warming.
But I would add this: if the rest of the world does warm during the next decade, while the Atlantic cools, then it will in my mind validate the computer models — the same computer models now predicting dramatic and near-catastrophic warming by century’s end.