I was interviewed by Skype yesterday by Jon Laurence of The Telegraph. The interview is now up at their website. Their introduction:

Science writer Marcel Crok says the 15-year slowdown in the expected rate of global warming shows the climate of the planet “is much less sensitive then we thought”.

The world’s foremost authority on the greenhouse effect, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will release its most comprehensive study to date on Friday in Stockholm.

The report is expected to say that the IPCC is now 95 per cent sure that humans are to blame for climate change, up from 90 per cent in 2007.

However, there has been a slowing in warming since 1998. The panel is expected to say this was caused by a temporary cooling cycle in the weather system and lower-than-expected solar activity.

Science writer Marcel Crok argues the Earth’s climate sensitivity – the estimate of how much the Earth’s climate will warm in response to the increased greenhouse effect – is less affected by human activity than the mainstream science community believes.

“Right now there is not really a good explanation for the slowdown, and this is really refreshing for the international debate because suddenly even mainstream climate scientists start to disagree with each other.

Note: I did not say that the lower climate sensitivity is due to the 15 year slowdown. The pause has not much influence yet on our observational estimates of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS). This was shown for example in the Otto et al letter where the ECS for the most recent decade was slightly higher than for earlier decades (due to a more efficient heat uptake in the oceans). I did say that the slowdown is largely unexplained so far and that are currently many hypotheses around.

 

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