Probing the reasons behind the changing pace of warming

But the problem is that these cycles are not well integrated into most climate models. Natural cycles could switch back to warming us again at any time, admits Stott. But he has no clear idea when.

The stakes for the climate forecasting community are high. It may be unfair, but the brutal truth is that if the climatologists get their forecasts for the coming decade badly wrong, then a great many in the public will simply not believe what they have to say about 2050 or 2100 – even though those forecasts may well be more reliable.

Forecasters badly need a way to forecast the ocean fluctuations, and it could just be that Guemas's new study will help them do that. She claims that her findings open the way to the future delivery of "operational decadal climate predictions." For now she is cautious about making firm predictions, but told me she believes that "the heat that has been absorbed recently by the ocean might very well be released back to the atmosphere soon. This would be the scenario of highest probability. It would mean an increased rate of [atmospheric] warming in the next decade."

It would indeed. If natural cycles start pushing towards strong warming, they will add to the continued inexorable upward push from rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. In that case, we would see climate change returning to the rapid pace of the 1990s. Whatever happened to global warming? The odds may be that by 2020 it will have come roaring back.