Climate models that accidentally got El Niño right also show warming slowdown

LINK

I thought this was an interesting article. Very interestingly showing thoroughness by climatologists that I've not seen reported on.

I'll let some others weigh in on this.

Ars talked to climate scientists Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann, who both emphasized that the new paper is in keeping with a variety of other studies that have come out in the recent past, with Mann saying, "This looks like a thoughtful and careful analysis that adds further weight to other recent studies (including our own recent GRL ‘Frontier’ article) confirming that the temperature trends of the past decade do not, as some have claimed, contradict model-predicted global warming. The so-called 'speed bump' in global warming is consistent with the expected random fluctuations associated with natural, internal climate variability."

But if the paper's a solid bit of evidence that's in keeping with other results, it seems likely that it was meant to be a bit more than that: ammunition in the arguments that keep erupting on the Internet. In a rather unusual situation for a climate paper, one of the authors is a psychologist. And not just any psychologist, but Stephan Lewandowsky, best known for whipping climate contrarians (and journal editors) into a frenzy with his "Recursive Fury" paper. And the last author is Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science best known for her book Merchants of Doubt, which chronicles the role of think tanks in fostering doubt over the reality of climate change.

Regardless of why these two researchers decided to step into the realm of climate science, their paper clearly shows that some climate models have accurately predicted the recent slowdown in warming. But only because they accidentally got El Niño right.

I'm no expert, but isn't getting El Niño right, something pretty important and when you get it wrong, it should be taken as a sign you messed up somewhere ?

Like ignoring the alarm of a fridge, for leaving a door open, because your data doesn't show that the door wasn't fully closed...

Or do I miss a point ?

El Niño hasn't happened yet?
They expect it... as far as I know. Or is this about the old El Niño?

Graphs can be manipulated to show whatever you want. The scale of the axis determines a lot. And the data only goes back to 1950. We have data from the 1800's. why not show how the world was a hundred years ago?

I believe that this might be important.

If you look at the four models that were the worst at reproducing ENSO behavior, then you'd think climate modelers were incompetent, as these models all showed rapid warming from 1990 onward. But, if you picked the four that had the best match to real-world ENSO data, then you see exactly what reality produced: a relatively slow rate of warming starting at about the beginning of the century.

Bolded part for emphasis.