Humans heating the planet faster than ever before, new study finds
Humanity is heating the planet faster than ever before, a study has found.Climate breakdown is occurring more rapidly, with the heating rate almost doubling, according to research that excludes the effect of natural factors behind the latest scorching temperatures.It found global heating accelerated from a steady rate of less than 0.2C per decade between 1970 and 2015, to about 0.35C per decade over the past 10 years. The rate is higher than scientists have seen since they started systematically taking the Earth’s temperature in 1880.“If the warming rate of the past 10 years continues, it would lead to a long-term exceedance of the 1.5C limit of the Paris agreement before 2030,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the study.Extreme heat in recent years has been pushed higher by natural fluctuations — such as solar cycles, volcanic eruptions, and the weather pattern El Niño — that have led scientists to question whether startling temperature readings are outliers or the result of an increase in global heating.The researchers applied a noise-reduction method to filter out the estimated effect of nonhuman factors in five major datasets that scientists have compiled to gauge the Earth’s temperature. In each of them, they found an acceleration in global heating that emerged in 2013 or 2014.“There is now pretty widespread — if not quite universal — agreement that there has been a detectable acceleration in warming in recent years,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, who was not involved in the study. “However, it remains unclear how much of the additional warming over the past decade in particular is a forced response versus unforced variability.” Carbon pollution has heated the planet by about 1.4C since pre-industrial levels, compounded by a recent drop in cooling sulphur pollutants that had provided temporary relief. A study Mr Hausfather co-authored last year also found climate breakdown has speeded up, but had the rate slightly slower than the new study, at 0.27C a decade.“Either way, this represents a significant increase in the rate of warming,” said Mr Hausfather. “[This] should be worrying as the world hurtles toward crossing 1.5C later this decade.” The past three years have been the hottest three-year period on record, the World Meteorological Organisation confirmed in January.
The Guardian
