Earth's climate is like an orchestra where each instrument plays at its own tempo. The ocean, the Sun, volcanoes, and human activity pull temperature in different directions. From 1998 to 2012, that orchestra seemed to slow down: the planet warmed more slowly than before, even though greenhouse gas emissions were breaking records. Scientists long debated why.
But a quarter remained, and that was explained by people themselves. We have been emitting less methane and ozone-depleting substances, gases that strongly warm the atmosphere. This happened thanks to international agreements, such as the Montreal Protocol. Scientists calculated that this reduction in emissions slowed warming by about 24%. That is good news: it means our efforts to clean the air are already working, and we can influence the climate faster than we thought.
The 1998-2012 warming slowdown was sometimes called a 'pause' in global warming, but more recent data with gap-filling in the Arctic showed that the pause was not as deep as previously thought.
In Kim Stanley Robinson's novel 'The Ministry for the Future', humanity's attempts to manage the climate are described, including reducing methane emissions. This study shows that such measures can indeed have a measurable effect in real time.