CLIMATE - Is the Pacific Ocean Responsible for a Pause in Global Warming?

From the 1940s through the 1970s there was no major warming trend in the average surface temperature of Earth. At the same time, the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is responsible for the weather patterns known as El Niño and La Niña that can swing global average temperatures by as much as 0.3 degree Celsius, was anomalously cold. For the past decade or so the tropical Pacific has again gone cold—more Niña than Niño—and a new study suggests that the phenomenon may explain the recent "pause" in global warming of average temperatures.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=pacific-ocean-and-cli