New paper: warming pause could last another 20 years A new paper does not dispute man's gases are heating the world, but predicts no more warming for perhaps another 20 years thanks to natural climate variability: A new paper published in a recent online edition of the journal Climate Dynamics suggests that this âunpredictable climate variability" behaves in a more predictable way than previously assumed. The paper's authors, Marcia Wyatt and Judith Curry, point to the so-called âstadium-wave" signal that propagates like the cheer at sporting events whereby sections of sports fans seated in a stadium stand and sit as a âwave" propagates through the audience. In like manner, the âstadium wave" climate signal propagates across the Northern Hemisphere through a network of ocean, ice, and atmospheric circulation regimes that self-organize into a collective tempo. The stadium wave hypothesis provides a plausible explanation for the [past 15-year] hiatus in warming and helps explain why climate models did not predict this hiatus... Building upon Wyatt's Ph.D. thesis at the University of Colorado, Wyatt and Curry identified two key ingredients to the propagation and maintenance of this stadium wave signal: the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and sea ice extent in the Eurasian Arctic shelf seas. The AMO sets the signal's tempo, while the sea ice bridges communication between ocean and atmosphere. The oscillatory nature of the signal can be thought of in terms of âbraking," in which positive and negative feedbacks interact to support reversals of the circulation regimes... The stadium wave periodically enhances or dampens the trend of long-term rising temperatures, which may explain the recent hiatus in rising global surface temperatures. "The stadium wave signal predicts that the current pause in global warming could extend into the 2030s," said Wyatt, an independent scientist after having earned her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 2012. Curry added, "This prediction is in contrast to the recently released IPCC AR5 Report that projects an imminent resumption of the warming, likely to be in the range of a 0.3 to 0.7 degree Celsius rise in global mean surface temperature from 2016 to 2035." Curry is the chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Thanks to reader Steve.