http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/science/earth/01climate.html?em&ex=1209787200&en=ddd0094cc411eb2f&ei=5087%0A
In a New Climate Model, Short-Term Cooling in a Warmer World
After decades of research
that sought, and found, evidence of a human influence on the earth’s
climate, climatologists are beginning to shift to a new and similarly
daunting enterprise: creating decade-long forecasts for climate, just
as meteorologists routinely generate weeklong forecasts for weather.
One of the first attempts to look ahead a decade, using computer
simulations and measurements of ocean temperatures, predicts a slight
cooling of Europe and North America, probably related to shifting
currents and patterns in the oceans.
The team that generated the forecast, whose members come from two
German ocean and climate research centers, acknowledged that it was a
preliminary effort. But in a short paper published in the May 1 issue
of the journal Nature, they said their modeling method was able to
reasonably replicate climate patterns in those regions in recent
decades, providing some confidence in their prediction for the next
one.
The authors stressed that the pause in warming represented only a
temporary blunting of the centuries of rising temperatures that
scientists have projected if carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping
gases continue accumulating in the atmosphere.
“We’re learning that internal climate variability is important and
can mask the effects of human-induced global change,” said the paper’s
lead author, Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine
Sciences in Kiel, Germany. “In the end this gives more confidence in
the long-term projections.”
Estaaaaaaaablishment, estaaaaablishment....you always know what's best......