Mojib Latif

 Background

Mojib Latif is a German meteorologist and oceanographer. He regularly participates in televised discussions about climate change. He is an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a climate physicist at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, Germany.

Mojib Latif is not a skeptic of climate change, although he does believe that there are natural fluctuations in the climate. He also notes that many skeptics have incorrectly cited his studies as proof that climate change is not happening. He says that the cooling he discovered was only temporary and "global warming will accelerate again." [1]

Stance on Climate Change

"If my name was not Mojib Latif, my name would be global warming. So I really believe in Global Warming. Okay. However, you know, we have to accept that there are these natural fluctuations, and therefore, the temperature may not show additional warming temporarily."[1]

Key Quotes

Excerpt from NPR Transcript:

RAZ: Now, your research, Dr. Latif, has been cited by climate change skeptics here in the U.S., by for example, George Will, a conservative columnist with the Washington Post, to show that the Earth actually goes through natural warming and cooling trends and that climate change is really being overhyped. Do you think your work is being misused?

Dr. LATIF: Yes. It is misused. I must say this, unfortunately, because these changes we are talking about, these short-term changes, you know, their amplitudes are much smaller than the long-term warming trends. So we are talking about a hold, okay, in the last 10 years. We are not talking about a net cooling to, say, (unintelligible) temperatures, (unintelligible), you know, which we observed 100 years ago or so. Okay, and also what we predicted for the future is basically that this hold may continue for another 10 years or so, okay, but we did not predict a cooling. We basically said that we would stay for some more years on this plateau. [1]

Key Deeds

September, 2009

Spoke at UN's World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland where he suggested that we may be entering two decades of cooler temperatures. [2]

2008

Published a study in Nature titled "Advancing Decadal-Scale Climate Prediction in the North Atlantic Sector."

This study argued that "global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming." Skeptics have incorrectly cited this study as proof of global cooling.

 Publications

• N. S. Keenlyside, M. Latif, J. Jungclaus, L. Kornblue and E. Roeckner. "Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector." Nature, 453 (May 1, 2008): 84-88. 

 Resources

1. "Scientist Explains Earth's Warming Plateau" (transcript). November 22, 2009, NPR.

2. Fred Pearce. "World will 'cool for the next decade'," New Scientist, September 9, 2009 (Issue 2725). Archived December 3, 2009.