Working at the prestigious Leibniz Institute in Kiel University in Germany, he has developed methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft under the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start.

For Europe, the crucial factor is the temperature in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. He said such ocean cycles - known as multi-decadal oscillations or MDOs - could account for up to half of the rise in global warming in recent years.

Professor Latif said: 'A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th century was due to these cycles - as much as 50 per cent.
'They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. All this may well last two decades or longer.

'The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling.'

Many meteorologists have blamed the current freeze on 'Arctic oscillation' - a weather pattern in which areas of high pressure have pushed the warming jetstream away from Britain. They have insisted this temporary change will have no effect on long-term warming patterns.

But another expert, Professor Anastasios Tsonis, head of the University of Wisconsin Atmospheric Sciences Group, said MDOs will continue to determine global temperatures.

He said: 'They amount to massive rearrangements in the dominant patterns of the weather, and their shifts explain all the major changes in world temperatures during the 20th and 21st centuries. We have such a change now.'
Original article... HERE

Return to index page