What I wrote to the Washington Post this time

I made a comment on the Washington Post Capital Weather Gang blog, in response to this column.  Actually, I wrote a couple of them.  But I'm providing the main one.  The discussion was about the unfortunate temporary hiatus in Earth surface warming, which is providing climate deniers (skeptics) all sorts of reasons to support their denying arguments.  The author may have been well-meaning, or maybe not, but he vertently or inadvertently became their supporter.

Here's the blog article:
Global warming of the Earth's surface has decelerated (Viewpoint)

Here's what I wrote in response:

The hiatus/pause talking point crops up frequently on Twitter. I've collected a couple of graphics which show that the main recent influence has been La Nina (colder surface water in the Pacific). Since we might be seeing the reversal this year, and since the warming has been like a step function, as you show in your plot, then the pause is inconveniently misleading what is really happening. In fact, La Nina years have warmed as well. This graphic puts the argument in a considerably altered perspective:

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20140121/gi...

Second, it pay to really see how cold the last couple of years have been, which is holding the trend back. Remember that 2010 was a dead-heat tie with 1998 as the warmest year ever, with a very mild El Nino present. On this page, scroll down to the Oceanic Nino Index plot:

http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm

The past years coincident with the pause have been dominated by La Nina, and even when it wasn't officially La Nina, the ONI index has been negative a lot more than it has been positive. Regarding the models, El Nino/La Nina specific behavior is not well captured by them. 

Also worth evaluating is the state of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. This has been indicated as having an influence on the frequency of occurrence and intensity of La Nina and El Nino. For the past decade, the PDO has been in the favorable phase encouraging to La Nina. 

http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/

So to answer your question, it IS temporary and length concerns are not evaluable. When the PDO switches and we have more El Nino state than La Nina state in the Pacific, temperatures will (unfortunately) rise rapidly and strongly. The other climate factors mentioned (solar, volcano, Arctic data) are secondary. 

The problem is that the hiatus gives psychological support to denierism. And you just helped. 

 Just checked back.  There's  470 other comments now.

Geez.