Global temperatures could be set to stay roughly the same for the next 10 years, it has been predicted.
A computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the natural climate cycles will enter a cooling phase and counter global warming.
But temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, the scientists warned.
The key to the new prediction is the natural cycle of ocean temperatures, called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is closely related to the warm currents that bring heat from the tropics to the shores of Europe.
Noel Keenlyside from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, said: "One message from our study is that in the short term, you can see changes in the global mean temperature that you might not expect given the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
"In the long term, radiative forcing (the Earth's energy balance) dominates. But it's important for policymakers to realise the pattern," he told the BBC.
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