There’s a good article in the Guardian today but Graham Readfearn, called the ‘pause’ in global warming is not even a thing. I certainly agree with the premise of the article; there’s no real evidence that anything has paused. Surface warming continues, ocean heat content continues to rise, Arctic sea ice continues to declines, ice sheet mass continues to decline.
So, I think maybe from now on, if anyone wants to mention the “pause” here, they’ll have to defined it quite precisely. What are you actually referring to, what time period and what are the uncertainties? Anyway, you can read the article yourself. The reason I thought I would post this is that it also included a short video of Matt England explaining how the unusually strong trade winds have pushed the warm surface waters in the Pacific to the west and forced warm water into the sub-surface layers. This means that a larger fraction of the energy excess is currently heating the oceans, with less heating the land and atmosphere. When these trade winds weaken, this should change and we should see faster surface warming than we’ve seen for the last decade or so. At least, that’s an explanation for the slowdown in surface warming, which – given that the ocean heat content has continued to rise despite the slowdown in surface warming – seems plausible.