A welcome pause

摘要

The rise in greenhouse-gas emissions means oceans are playing a bigger role in regulating the climate. In parts of the Pacific Ocean, huge upwellings from the bottom bring cold water from the depths and push warm surface water down. According to a new study in Nature Climate Change by Matthew England of the University of New South Wales and others, higher air temperatures are strengthening east-west trade winds at equatorial latitudes in the Pacific and speeding up this vast churn, sequestering heat that would otherwise have warmed the Earth's surface. This, they say, explains much of the recent slowdown in the rise of surface temperatures that has puzzled climate scientists since it began in 1998.