Meridional Overturning Circulation will halt global warming. Well, temporarily.

So what on earth is the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) you ask?

It is the 'conveyor belt' that brings warmer water up into the North Atlantic - the gulf stream that makes the UK's climate considerably warmer than it really ought to be. Full story is from The Telegraph.

The MOC "has a 70 to 80-year cycle and when the circulation is strong, it creates warmer temperatures in Europe. When it is weak, as it will be over the next decade, temperatures fall. Scientists think that variations of this kind could partly explain the cooling of global average temperatures between the 1940s and 1970s after which temperatures rose again."

And scientists do not understand quite how reductions in salinity (as caused by fresh water run-off from melting ice sheets and glaciers) may additionally affect these long term ocean circulation trends.

So, although the earth will continue to warm as a whole, probably as a direct consequence of our CO2 emissions, those of us in the UK, and elsewhere around the North Atlantic, are probably going to see little or no overall temperature increase until 2015.