According to Daily Sea Surface Temperature, North Atlantic [1] the temperature is indeed lower than last year, but it is still higher than it was before the record temperatures of 2023 and above the 2σ plus for the 1982-2011 mean. So, the cooling is rather relative if you take these figures. Maybe the article is referring to another measurement of the temperature of the Atlantic.

[1] https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/

After reading the article more careful, it seems that it is about the cooling of the Atlantic near the equator. I understand that articles on site like the New Scientist do not include links to the original scientific reports or data, but at most links to the people they are quoting. This makes it difficult to verify the statements or to even precisely understand what it is about. The Atlantic is a large ocean reaching from almost the arctic to antarctic, an averages of some parts of it could only have a weak correlation with each other even if they are partly overlapping.

search by primary author, often works.

in this case the subject matter “Atlantic Niña”

elicits:

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/atlantic...

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/atlantic-nina-on-the-verge-of-deve...

I guess you have to wait for the article in The Atlantic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/04/dubai-om...

I don't' think the article is focused on the temperature itself but rather the rate of change. During the time period referenced the speed of temperature change was fastest.

The derivative is the topic.

This is good to note. The New Scientist article is really talking about the rate of cooling, not the extent of cooling.

This. The point of interest should had been why it warmed up so fast before, not why it falling down now to a bit closer to what used to be normal. Specially if we are talking about limited regions of the ocean (not the whole ocean), with water circulation playing a role there.

“And nobody knows why” is such a clickbait term it’s practically a meme these days.

If we actually think about it, a vast amount of knowledge in the world around us is still to be discovered. So we really should learn to curb our instinct to lean into a “shocking mystery” just because something is flagged as an unknown.

Would be great if they mentioned which models fail to predict this effect. If it is all of them, that’s a problem, because those models are driving geopolitical decisions.

Feel like you’re just here looking for something to get upset about

No? It's a perfectly reasonable response. Imagine if we just accepted an answer without any sources. This article has a lack of proper sources, therefore it's hard to explain why

I think this is a very reasonable question. The climate models are full of parameters and there is a concern of overfitting. If a model were to predict the cooling that would help countering those concerns.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Sorry Dang. Will work on this

Yes. Excised. Thanks!

I've seen a movie about this recently.

We need a Hippocratic Oath for journalism headlines.

While well intentioned at first - it would inevitably be weaponized against legitimate journalists from speaking inconvenient and unpopular facts. Better to just teach the public to think critically.