Attributing the Global Warming Slowdown of the Last Decade

Abstract:

Despite a sustained production of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, the Earth’s mean near-surface temperature paused its rise from 2000 onward. To explain such a pause, an increase in ocean heat uptake below the superficial ocean layer has been hypothesized to overcompensate for the Earth’s heat storage. Contributions have also been suggested from the deep prolonged solar minimum, the stratospheric water vapor, the stratospheric and tropospheric aerosols. This presentation will illustrate how successful retrospective climate predictions of this warming slowdown up to 5 years ahead can be exploited to attribute this slowdown through sensitivity experiments and heat budget analysis.