Climate Change skeptics? [ot]

Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus

Despite ongoing increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases, the Earth’s global average surface air temperature has remained more or less steady since 2001. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to account for this slowdown in surface warming. A key component of the global hiatus that has been identified is cool eastern Pacific sea surface temperature, but it is unclear how the ocean has remained relatively cool there in spite of ongoing increases in radiative forcing. Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades—unprecedented in observations/reanalysis data and not captured by climate models—is sufficient to account for the cooling of the tropical Pacific and a substantial slowdown in surface warming through increased subsurface ocean heat uptake. The extra uptake has come about through increased subduction in the Pacific shallow overturning cells, enhancing heat convergence in the equatorial thermocline. At the same time, the accelerated trade winds have increased equatorial upwelling in the central and eastern Pacific, lowering sea surface temperature there, which drives further cooling in other regions. The net effect of these anomalous winds is a cooling in the 2012 global average surface air temperature of 0.1–0.2 °C, which can account for much of the hiatus in surface warming observed since 2001. This hiatus could persist for much of the present decade if the trade wind trends continue, however rapid warming is expected to resume once the anomalous wind trends abate.

a, Temperature anomalies are shown as the annual mean relative to 1951–1980, with individual years shown as grey bars and a five-year running mean overlaid in bold. b, Pacific wind stress anomalies are computed over the region 6° N–6°… 

Colour shading shows observed temperature trends (°C per decade) during 1992–2011 at the sea surface (Northern Hemisphere only), zonally averaged in the latitude-depth sense (as per Supplementary Fig. 6) and along the equatorial Pacifi…

Lovely bit of cherry picking.

Looking at the similar charts for October, November, December, January, February and March (the colder months), the trend for all of those months looks more favorable.

But which comes first.... the wind or the hot water? Can't tell from the abstract.

More curve fitting.
Oh joy.
Rapture.