A few points about my article

Thanks for all your comments. To answer some of the points raised directly:



1) Which was the hottest year?



From this table the Met Office clearly show 1998 as the warmest year on record. Temperatures have levelled out and fallen since then. In fact last year, as you can see, was much cooler than 1998.



Should we 'strip' 1998 of El Nino? I didn't think so for my article, because we have always have had El Ninos and La Ninas. Also - where would you stop? Would you get rid of PDOs and ADOs, too?



2) Did the models predict that temperatures would level off?



None of the climate models suggested that global temperatures would not rise any further for at least another 10 years, which is what we have observed. The Hadley Centre model does incorporate ocean cycles. But that doesn't alter the fact that the models did not predict this. So the question must be, will it/has it captured the negative PDO that some scientists say will last for the next 20 odd years - and if it hasn't, why hasn't it? I also know that the Met Office are currently conducting research into why temperatures have levelled off/fallen from their peak.



Mine is by no means the only recent contribution to the argument on the BBC site. Many other reports by a number of correspondents have been published. For example, as Richard Black explains here, knowing how our climate and C02 emissions have changed in the past is just as important as predicting what it's going to do in the future.

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