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Global warming lull likely

London: Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures have suggested that there may be a “lull” in global warming due to natural variations in the climate.

“The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would predict a 0.3C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that,” said Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel, Germany.

Scientists now expect a “lull” for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Keenlyside, however, stressed that it was just the initial findings of how the oceans behave over decades and it would be misleading to conclude that global warming, in the sense of the enhanced greenhouse effect from increased carbon emissions, had ended.

According to a paper published in the journal Nature, it would mean that the 0.3C global average temperature rise, which has been predicted for the next decade by the IPCC, may not happen. However, the effect of rising fossil fuel emissions will mean that warming will accelerate again after 2015 when natural trends in the oceans veer back towards warming. — PTI

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