The past few months provide us a nice example of climate, and a useful framing for thinking about the future. Scientists are always explaining that just because the globe is, on average, warming, that does not mean that it no longer gets cold. When I have written about this in the past, I always start with the Sun still goes away at the winter pole; it gets cold; the pole is relatively isolated, so there are cold pockets of air up north.
RickyRood, • 1:23 AM GMT on May 21, 2012
As it stands in my mind today, the variability in the North Atlantic temperature behavior is strongly influenced by aerosols in the atmosphere and a trend due to increasing carbon dioxide. If there is oscillatory behavior in the temperature, it is due to increases and decreases in atmospheric aerosols, perhaps on top of a smaller atmospheric-oceanic dynamic variation that still requires explanation. A good step forward, I think.
RickyRood, • 9:27 PM GMT on May 07, 2012