An interesting and disturbing paper from James Hansen et al. The message I get from this is that aerosol pollution has increased since 2000, mainly from increased coal-burning, and this has reduced global warming. The CO2 from the coal burning stays in the atmosphere for centuries but the aerosols fall out after about five days. This means that if we were to stop burning coal, or simply clean up the aerosol emissions from burning coal, the rate of global warming would increase immediately. However, if we don't stop burning coal, longer-term global warming will be all the greater because of the increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Aerosol pollution is one possible contributor to the reduction in surface warming but there remain major uncertainties around the size of this contribution. These uncertainties would have been reduced by measurements from a satellite designed to measure aerosol concentrations. Unfortunately, the launch of this satellite failed and there are no plans to replace it.
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