Trades

New research suggests strongly that Pacific Ocean trade winds are churning up the water, pushing what would have been surface heat into deeper levels of the ocean. As with a lot of things that are currently happening to our climate, we don't quite know what happens next. But this information, if confirmed with other supporting evidence, explains one recent problem, the recent slowdown in the rate of increase of surface warming. I don't think that this is good news -- you only have to take a look at what's been happening this winter in Great Britain to see that adding energy to the oceans is probably not a good thing.

The following picture comes from the Guardian newspaper and can be seen in its original context at this page here.