The Earth’s temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted.
A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.
Modelling of climatic events in the oceans is difficult, simply because there is relatively little data on some of the key processes, such as the meridional overturning circulation MOC – sometimes erroneously known as the Gulf Stream – which carries heat northwards in the Atlantic.
Only within the last few years have researchers begun systematically deploying mobile floats and tethered buoys that will, in time, tell us how this circulation is changing.
