There is a remarkable quote on the Nature.com blog website . On that website it is written
“The NY Times wraps up its main piece [by Andy Revkin] with a useful quote from Kevin Trenberth, of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research: ‘Too many think global warming means monotonic relentless warming everywhere year after year. It does not happen that way.’”
This is an amazing error. Global warming does require a more-or-less monotonic increase in warming (in the absence of a major volcanic eruption) as illustrated in all available multi-decadal global model runs (e.g. see the Figure in this post on Climate Science ; and see Figure 1 in Barnett et al, 2001). This essentially monotonic report is even emphasized in the 2007 IPCC Summary for Policymakers (see Figure SPM.4)!
Climate Science published a proposed test of the multi-decadal global model predictions (see A Litmus Test For Global Warming - A Much Overdue Requirement). Clearly, so far, the models are failing to skillfully predict the rate (and even the sign for the most recent years) of global warming. Andy Revkin should follow up his article to document what the models predict in terms of global warming (in Joules) over different time periods, and what do the observations actually show. This would be excellent investigative (much needed) journalism.