Global warming has significantly accelerated
Baku, March 7, AZERTAC
Planetary warming has significantly accelerated over the past 10 years, with temperatures rising at a higher rate since 2015 than in any previous decade on record, according to Bloomberg.
The Earth warmed around 0.35C (0.62F) in the decade to 2025, compared to just under 0.2C per decade on average between 1970 and 2015, according to a paper published on Friday in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. This is the first statistically significant evidence of an acceleration of global warming, the authors said.
The past three years have been the hottest on record, compared to the average before the Industrial Revolution. In 2024, warming went past 1.5C, the lower limit set by the Paris Agreement. That target refers to temperature increases over 20 years, but breaching it for one year shows efforts to slow down climate change have been insufficient, the scientists who wrote the new paper said.
The findings shed light on an ongoing debate among researchers. While there is consensus that greenhouse gas emissions have caused the planet to heat up since pre-industrial times, that warming had been steady for decades. But record-breaking temperatures in recent years have led scientists to question whether the pace of temperature gains is accelerating.
Demonstrating that was difficult due to natural fluctuations in temperatures. The researchers filtered out the “noise” to make the “underlying long-term warming signal” more clearly visible, said Grant Foster, a co-author of the study and a US-based statistics expert.
The new report adds to a growing body of work that indicates climate change is having a quicker and larger impact on the planet than scientists have understood. A separate paper published this week found that many studies on sea-level increases underestimate how much water along the coast has already risen.