Is Climate Change On Hiatus?

Brad Plumer warns against complacency when interpreting the latest data on global temperature:

We’re still on pace to blow past that 2°C climate target. Intricate arguments about climate sensitivity often bypass a crucial point. Humanity is on pace to do a lot more than simply double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by the end of the century (compared with pre-industrial levels). Doubling means going up to 560 parts per million. We’re currently at about 400 ppm and rising fast.

Nate Cohn describes how the slowdown in global warming over the last 15 years is improving scientists’ ability to model climate change by forcing them to rethink how heat is stored in oceans, the effects of aerosols, and variations in the sun’s output:

What all of these discoveries hint at is that scientists, at long last, have developed a better understanding of year-to-year climate variations. In a way, you could think of it like the stock market. Watching Wall Street, we see the indices rise and fall, and we know the news that has influenced the swings. Watching annual temperatures, scientists could see the fluctuations but, until recently, knew little about the news–even though they were confident that increased carbon dioxide would ensure a bull market over the longer run. With an updated understanding of deep ocean temperatures and stratospheric aerosols, that has changed. [MIT Professor Susan] Solomon thinks “we’ve learned a lot about interdecadal variability” as a result of the hiatus.

He worries, however, about the political implications of this continuing learning process:

[T]he so-called scientific consensus on global warming doesn’t look like much like consensus when scientists are struggling to explain the intricacies of the earth’s climate system, or uttering the word “uncertainty” with striking regularity. … In the current political climate, debates about things like climate change are carried out in broad-brush assertions. The challenge for scientists is that the more they understand the climate system, the more complex it gets, and the harder it gets to model with precision—not to mention making the kinds of sweeping statements the news cycle requires.