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Oceanography

Has global warming stalled?

Nature Climate Change volume 3, pages 618–619 (2013)Cite this article

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Following a period of rapid warming from the 1970s, global temperatures seem to have stalled. New analysis of the uptake of heat by the upper ocean sheds light on the cause and suggests that the slowdown could have been predicted.

It is well established that gases such as carbon dioxide warm our planet through the 'greenhouse effect': they are relatively transparent to the incoming radiation from the sun, but trap some of the longer-wavelength radiation emitted by the Earth. However, other factors both natural and manmade can also change the temperature. For example, a cooling could be caused by a downturn of solar radiation, or an increase in the radiation reflected back to space by aerosol particles in the atmosphere. Aerosols increase temporarily after volcanic eruptions, but are also generated by pollution, especially sulphur dioxide from industry. These factors are referred to as external because they are imposed on the climate system, which consists of the oceans, atmosphere, land and cryosphere. However, climate also varies internally without any changes in external factors. Examples of such natural internal variability include the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, which causes the tropical Pacific to warm and cool every few years, and decadal variations in the strength of the ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean. Both of these affect the climate worldwide, including globally averaged temperatures.

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Figure 1: The recent slowdown in surface warming.

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  1. Doug Smith is at the Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK,

    Doug Smith

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  1. Doug Smith
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Correspondence to Doug Smith.

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Smith, D. Has global warming stalled?. Nature Clim Change 3, 618–619 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1938

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