In the wake of Karl et al's frantic tweaking of the global temperature data in order to get the pause to disappear, a new paper by Nieves et al, also in Science, comes up with a different theory to explain what's happening, this time putting it down to natural variability:
Recent modeling studies have proposed different scenarios to explain the slowdown in surface temperature in the most recent decade. Some of these studies seem to support the idea of internal variability and/or rearrangement of heat between the surface and the ocean interior. Others suggest that radiative forcing might also play a role. Our examination of observational data over the past two decades shows some significant differences compared to model results from reanalyses, and provides the most definitive explanation of how the heat was redistributed. We find that cooling in the top 100-meter layer of the Pacific Ocean was mainly compensated by warming in the 100- to 300-meter layer of the Indian and Pacific Oceans in the past decade since 2003.
So while the Karl et al paper gave rise to headlines that the hiatus was no more, this one seems to confirm that it's real. The right-on message is therefore that warming is continuing but that the heat's in the ocean (just not deep down as Trenberth argued).
Judith Curry gives the paper a welcome here and David Whitehouse has an excellent review of it here. I sense that Whitehouse shares my view that we don't have good enough temperature data to draw firm conclusions about what is going on in the oceans.
Reading University's Richard Allan was interviewed on the Today programme about the paper as well (audio below). Allan argues that over the coming decades the heating will start to be felt at the surface again and managed to sneak in a bit of advocacy at the end, saying that we need to put in place measures to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels. How nice for scientists to be able to advance their political views unchallenged!