Global warming has accelerated sharply over the past decade, with Earth heating up faster than at any point since modern temperature records began in 1880. A new study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) provides the first statistically significant evidence that the pace of global warming has increased since around 2015, even after accounting for natural factors that temporarily raise or lower global temperatures. Researchers found that the planet has warmed at a rate of approximately 0.35°C per decade over the past 10 years, although the exact figure varies depending on the temperature dataset used.
That is nearly twice the average rate of just under 0.2°C per decade recorded between 1970 and 2015. The findings suggest that global temperatures are not simply continuing to rise. The rate at which they are increasing has also become substantially faster.
"We can now demonstrate a strong and statistically significant acceleration of global warming since around 2015," says Grant Foster, a US statistics expert and co-author of the study, published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. Scientists Uncover a Hidden Acceleration in Global Warming Detecting changes in the underlying pace of global warming is more complicated than simply comparing temperatures from one year to the next. Natural climate patterns can temporarily make the planet warmer or cooler, potentially obscuring longer trends.
For example, El Niño can temporarily increase global temperatures by releasing heat from the tropical Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere. Volcanic eruptions can have the opposite effect when particles released into the atmosphere reflect sunlight back into space. Changes in solar activity can also influence how much energy Earth receives from the Sun.
These natural variations create fluctuations in temperature records that can make it difficult to determine whether the underlying warming trend is accelerating. To address this problem, the researchers mathematically adjusted the temperature observations to account for these known influences. This allowed them to examine the longer warming trend more clearly, without the temporary fluctuations that can disguise changes in its pace.
"We filter out known natural influences in the observational data, so that the 'noise' is reduced, making the underlying long-term warming signal more clearly visible," Foster added. The team analyzed five major global temperature datasets (NASA, NOAA, HadCRUT, Berkeley Earth, ERA5). These widely used records combine observations and, in some cases, additional atmospheric data to track how Earth's temperature has changed over time.
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