Don’t worry, it’s not dead. It’s just resting. By all means, keep holding those mega-concerts.

Average temperatures in areas such as California and France may drop over the next 10 years, influenced by colder flows in the North Atlantic, said a report today by the institution based in Kiel, Germany. Temperatures worldwide may stabilize in the period.

The study was based on sea-surface temperatures of currents that move heat around the world, and vary from decade to decade. This regional cooling effect may temporarily neutralize the long- term warming phenomenon caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases building up around the earth, said Richard Wood, a research scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a U.K. provider of environmental and weather-related services…

“If we don’t experience warming over the next 10 years, it doesn’t mean that greenhouse-gas warming is not with us,” [Noel] Keenlyside said in an interview. “There can be natural fluctuations that may mask climate change in the short term.”…

“Natural variations over the next 10 years might be heading in the cold direction,” Wood said. “If you run the model long enough, eventually global warming will win.”…

“We thought a lot about the way to present this because we don’t want it to be turned around in the wrong way,” Keenlyside said. “I hope it doesn’t become a message of Exxon Mobil and other skeptics.”

The good news for environmentalists? This is all based on computer modeling. And as we know only too well by now, global warming modeling is chock full of mistakes.

Update: Good news for the obese, though, huh? Chow down — but only until 2018!