Cooling Pacific has dampened global warming, research shows

Research explains why changes in tropical waters could be responsible for recent ‘pause’ in rising temperatures

Fiona Harvey
The Guardian, Wednesday 28 August 2013 18.00 BST

Global warming and pacific oecan temperatures oscillation El Niño and La Niña : planet Earth
View of Pacific Ocean from outer space. Photograph: MODIS/Terra/NASA

Cooling waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean appear to be a major factor in dampening global warming in recent years, scientists said on Wednesday.

Their work is a big step forward in helping to solve the greatest puzzle of current climate change research – why global average surface temperatures, while still on an upward trend, have risen more slowly in the past 10 to fifteen years than previously.

Waters in the eastern tropical regions of the Pacific have been notably cooler in recent years, owing to the effects of one of the world’s biggest ocean circulatory systems, the Pacific decadal oscillation.

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