Heads Up Climate Change Combatants: Global Warming Likely To Resume This Year

Global WarmingWhy? El Nino. The El Nino Southern Oscillation
(ENSO) is a weather phenomenon in which hot water near Indonesia
sloshes over to the coast of Peru. When this happens it
dramatically boosts the average temperature of the global
atmosphere. The highest global average temperature recorded in the
past 150 years or so occurred during the big El Nino of 1998. On
June 5, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s
Climate Prediction Center issued a statement predicting that there
is a
70 percent chance that an El Nino will emerge
this summer,
rising to an 80 percent chance that it will arrive by this fall and
winter.

El Nino

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2013
Physical Sciences report issued last September
acknowledged that global average temperatures during the past 16
years have not been increasing as the climate computer models
projected that they should have done. Nevertheless, the IPCC report
states that the current temperature slow-down will soon end and
declares:

It is more likely than not that internal climate
variability in the near-term will enhance and not counteract the
surface warming expected to arise from the increasing anthropogenic
forcing.

What sort of internal climate variability? A big El Nino would
certainly do. In other words, when the warm-up resumes, IPCC
predicts it will soar.

By how much? The IPCC report projects:

The global mean surface temperature change for the period
2016-2035 relative to 1986-2005 will likely be in the range of
0.3°C to 0.7°C.

This implies increases of 0.15°C to 0.35°C per decade. Keep in
mind that the satellite data finds that the globe since 1979 has
been warming at a rate of 0.14°C per decade.

Some climatologists speculate that a big
El Nino could “flip” the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
from its
current cool phase to a warm phase, thus ending the temperature
“hiatus.” If the El Nino happens later this year, it’s safe to
predict that planet warming will pale in comparison to the heated
rhetoric exchanged between climate “alarmists” and “deniers.”

One short-term good could come of an El Nino – lots of rain for
California and other parts of the parched Southwest.

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