In case you didn't understand the cause of the global warming slowdown

(If you want this on a T-shirt, go here.)

He goes by the pseudonym Tamino, and by his real name he's an accomplished statistician.  As Tamino, he specializes in skewering the pseudoscientific natterings of climate change skeptics, skillfully showing how bad they are at doing what they purport to be doing.   At other times, he skillfully defends the climate change position with accurate statistical arguments.

One of the more vexatious current climate conditions is the observed slowing down of the rate of warming over the past 15 or 16 years or so.  Skeptics are exploiting this trend, clumsily ignoring all of the other evidence, such as hundreds of natural phenological trends responding to warming, summer Arctic sea ice extent setting minimum records repeatedly (and clearly declining trends in thickness/volume), and even such obvious things as the first decade of this century being the warmest ever, and the year 2010 being the warmest year ever, aided by a modest El Niño.

But that El Niño condition (or lack of it) is also apparently responsible for the observed slowdown in the warming trend.  (Nature paper by Kosaka and Xie.)  And if you want to understand that, Tamino has provided an absolutely excellent explication of it.

El Niño and the Non-Spherical Cow

To really get how good this is, read the whole thing (including the illustrations).  I've grabbed two paragraphs that state some basic conclusions pretty well.   I've had to grab one figure, too.

1.

"The bottom line is that those who claim that global warming has “stopped” or even “paused” are deluding themselves. The phrase “global warming” refers to climate change, including temperature increase, which is caused by mankind, and that has continued unabated. In fact, if it weren’t for the continued warming due to human activity, natural variations (like ENSO) would have brought about a notable cooling over the last decade or so. But Earth hasn’t cooled during that period, not even at the surface where we notice it most immediately, and that’s because the man-made component — global warming — has continued."

2.  First the figure:

And the interpretation of it:

"This is, according to the new research, how ENSO has modified global temperature since 1950. The influence is clear: a pronounced recent ENSO-induced cooling which has cancelled the continued global warming due to man-made CO₂, leading to the “hiatus” in the increase of global temperature."

OK, got that?  There is a current slowdown in the increase in global temperature - and scientists know why.  And we will get hit with heat when this influence goes away - and it will.  And then the skeptics will be roasted.

Along with us, unfortunately.