Atlantic Ocean caught storing heat for decades, creating global warming “staircase”

Warming Hiatus — (Top) Global average surface temperatures, where black dots are yearly averages. Two flat periods (hiatus) are separated by rapid warming from 1976-1999. (Middle) Observations of heat content, compared to the average, in the north Atlantic Ocean.

Following rapid warming in the late 20^th century, this century has so far seen surprisingly little increase in the average temperature at the Earth’s surface. At first this was a blip, then a trend, then a puzzle for the climate science community.

New research co-authored by Ka-Kit Tung, a UW professor of applied mathematics and adjunct faculty member in atmospheric sciences, has found that the Atlantic Ocean has stored much of the missing heat, as part of a natural cycles.