Cooling Pacific has dampened global warming, research shows

[NickB79]

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/28/cooling-pacific-dampened-global-warming

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.

Many people are aware of the El Niño and La Niña weather systems, which affect the Pacific and bring hotter and stormier or cooler weather in cycles of just a few years, and can have a strong effect on global weather. But few are aware that both of these systems are just part of the much bigger Pacific decadal oscillation, which brings warmer and cooler weather over decades.

So, to summarize:

-Even with the largest ocean on Earth in a naturally occurring cooling trend, the planet itself has not cooled, due to human activity counter-acting it.

-The Pacific is doing this by taking the excess heat of AGW, and PUMPING IT INTO DEEP WATER.

-This deep-water heating could/will be released with a vengeance once the natural cooling phase flips back to a heating phase sometime in the next decade or so.

Long story short: We're in the calm before the storm here. Things are gonna get scary when the Pacific system flips again.

[truebrit71]

1. So it's all part of the natural cycle as we slowly edge ever warmer...?

..any idea on what triggers the Pacific oscillation to 'switch'?