Short-Term Pause in Warming Predicted for Europe and North America. By Andrew C. Revkin, NYTimes, May 1, 2008. "After decades of research that sought, and found, evidence of a human influence on the earth's climate, climatologists are beginning to shift [their focus]: creating decade-long forecasts for climate... One of the first attempts to look ahead a decade... predicts a slight cooling of Europe and North America, probably related to shifting currents and patterns in the oceans... In a short paper published in the May 1 issue of the journal Nature, [the team that generated the forecast] ... stressed that the pause in warming represented only a temporary blunting of the centuries of rising temperatures that scientists have projected if... heat-trapping gases continue accumulating in the atmosphere... It should... help the public and policy makers understand that a cool phase does not mean the overall theory of human-driven warming is flawed, [Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder] said. 'Too many think global warming means monotonic relentless warming everywhere year after year,' Dr. Trenberth said. 'It does not happen that way.'"
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