WMO CONFERENCE WARNING: WORLD CLIMATE MAY CONTINUE TO COOL FOR TWO DECADES

Forecasts of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter.

One of the world's top climate modellers said Thursday we could be about to enter "one or even two decades during which temperatures cool. "People will say this is global warming disappearing," Latif told more than 1500 of the world's top climate scientists gathering in Geneva at the UN's World Climate Conference.

Few climate scientists go as far as Latif, an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But more and more agree that the short-term prognosis for climate change is much less certain than once thought.

 

Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, Latif said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. "But how much? The jury is still out," he told the conference. The NAO is now moving into a colder phase. Latif said NAO cycles also explained the recent recovery of the Sahel region of Africa from the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. James Murphy, head of climate prediction at the Met Office, agreed and linked the NAO to Indian monsoons, Atlantic hurricanes and sea ice in the Arctic.

 Another favourite climate nostrum was upturned when Pope warned that the dramatic Arctic ice loss in recent summers was partly a product of natural cycles rather than global warming. Preliminary reports suggest there has been much less melting this year than in 2007 or 2008.

 

--Fred Pearce, New Scientist, 4 September 2009

Tags: