Strong Pacific Trade Help Combat a Warming World

According to a new study Mother Nature is trying to fight climate change alongside us, with strong Pacific trade winds helping to prevent an increasingly warming world.

The chemical changes in corals helped reveal the link between weak tropical Pacific trade winds and warmer global temperatures (1910-1940). In contrast, when this natural pattern shifted and winds gained their strength back, the warming slowed down, as seen after 1940.

"Strong winds in the tropical Pacific are playing a role in the slowdown of warming over the past 15 years," lead author Diane Thompson said in a statement. "When the winds inevitably change to a weaker state, warming will start to accelerate again."

Researchers hope to gain a better understanding of this phenomenon so that they can more accurately predict the future effects of climate change and how to mitigate them.

How the link between these trade winds and the global climate works is that unusually strong trade winds along the equator in the Pacific Ocean are driving heat into the ocean while simultaneously bringing cooler water to the surface. That's why strong winds are helping to prevent global temperatures from climbing, by leaving less heat in the air.

This could possibly be a factor contributing to the world's current global warming hiatus, which, despite what some people believe, does not mean that global warming isn't happening. Others believe that the Earth's missing heat is rooted deep in the Atlantic Ocean.

Pacific trade winds have impacted the Earth's global climate before, albeit in the opposite direction. In the early 20^th century - when a third of the century's global warming took place, though not because of greenhouse gas emissions - weaker winds allowed warming to accelerate. Researchers focused on this time period, from 1894 to 1982, during their study when analyzing a coral skeleton that grew near a western tropical Pacific island during this time.

But researchers are quick to note that Pacific trade winds are just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to global warming.

"This research shows that the influence of winds on climate is not anything new. These mechanisms have been at work earlier," Thompson said. "We believe this is a significant contribution to understanding the role of natural processes in modulating global temperature change."

The findings were published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

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