The cause of climate alarmism has been struck another near-fatal blow by a new study from a NASA research team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Using a combination of satellite observations and direct measurements taken by a network of 3,000 floating Argo temperature probes, the NASA team set out to calculate temperature changes and thermal expansion in the deep ocean (below 1.24 miles).

What they have found is that the deep ocean has not warmed measurably since at least 2005.

This unfortunate discovery represents a major problem for the climate alarmists because the “missing heat” supposedly hiding in the deep oceans has long been their favoured explanation as to why there has been no measured “global warming” for the last 18 years.

Here, for example, is what Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) told National Geographic in February this year:

“Strong trade winds are bringing cooler water to the surface in the equatorial Pacific and mixing more heat into the deeper ocean.”

This meant, National Geographic helpfully summarised, that “the missing heat from global warming is being stored in a deeper warm pool in the western Pacific.”

And here is NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth, Godfather of the “missing heat hiding in deep ocean” theory, speaking in October last year to Bloomberg.

In fact, there is mounting evidence that deeper regions of the ocean, down to 2000 meters, are absorbing heat faster than ever, Trenberth said in a phone call. His research shows the oceans began taking on significantly more heat at around the same time the surface warming began to slow in 1998. His widely cited work was published just after the cutoff to be included in the IPCC report. The irony, says Trenberth, is that when the surface of the planet is unusually sweltering, the Earth actually radiates more heat into the atmosphere, in effect slowing the long-term warming of the planet. And in “hiatus” years, when the surface is cooler, the Earth absorbs more of the sun’s heat deep the oceans, slowly cooking the planet. What you see isn’t always what you get.

What has happened here, in other words, is that for years the warmists have been fobbing off their teachers with the excuse that “the dog ate their homework”. But it simply won’t wash any more because the teacher has now discovered that they don’t actually own a dog.