Global warming picking up pace, study says

A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters has confirmed that global warming has entered a phase of significant acceleration. For decades, the earth’s temperature rose at a steady rate of about 0.2 °C per decade. Recent record-breaking years sparked a debate among scientists about whether this pace was increasing but natural events such as volcanic eruptions and solar cycles frustrated efforts to find a definitive answer.

University of Potsdam researchers addressed this by stripping away these natural factors from five major global temperature datasets to reveal what they’ve said is a clearer underlying trend. Per their analysis, reported with 98% confidence, global warming has indeed accelerated, with the shift becoming statistically significant around the year 2015. In fact, the earth appears to have warmed faster over the last decade than during any other decade on record.

The authors said the cause was likely a drop in aerosol levels: these pollutants reflect sunlight and mask some of the warming caused by greenhouse gases. But as countries cleaned up air pollution, they inadvertently removed their cooling effect, allowing the world to feel the full heat of global warming.

The implications are urgent. The researchers have projected that at the newfound rate, the earth could breach the 1.5 °C limit established by the Paris Agreement by 2030. In turn this suggests that current efforts to curb emissions are insufficient and that to buck this trend, humankind may have to reach net-zero emissions far more quickly.