What was done
As an intermediate step in their attempt to demonstrate the reliability of cod stock predictions for the Barents Sea based on climate-change scenarios, the authors produced a 20th-century (1900-1995) history of mean sea water temperature from the surface to a depth of 200 meters for the "Kola Section" of the Barents Sea, which stretches from 70°30'N to 72°30'N along the 33°30' E meridian.

What was learned
Judging from the visual presentation of the data (the authors' Fig. 5), the mean temperature of the upper 200 meters of water of the Kola Section rose by approximately 1°C from 1900 to 1940.  Thereafter, it declined 'til about 1980, whereupon it rose to the end of the record.  The latter increase, however, was not great enough to bring water temperatures back to the highs they experienced in the 1940s and early 1950s; and a linear regression from 1940 onward (or even 1930 onward) would clearly have a negative slope indicative of overall cooling over the final 55 (or 65) years of the record.

What it means
Once again (see our Editorial of 1 July 2000), there has been no net warming of this urban-heat-island-free region of the planet for perhaps the last seventy years.  Nothing unprecedented here!