Study finds global warming accelerating since 2015 after filtering natural climate variability from temperature records.
Global warming has accelerated over the past decade, according to a new analysis of global temperature records by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research . The study finds that the pace of warming since 2015 has increased significantly compared with previous decades.
Using multiple global temperature datasets, researchers estimate that the planet has warmed by around 0.35°C per decade over the last ten years. Between 1970 and 2015, the average rate of warming was just under 0.2°C per decade.The finding suggests that the current decade is warming faster than any other period since modern temperature records began in 1880. The acceleration becomes visible after adjusting the data to remove natural climate fluctuations.“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.Filtering climate data noiseNatural climate variability can temporarily mask long-term warming trends. Events such as El Niño, volcanic eruptions and changes in solar activity often add short-term fluctuations to global temperature records.To isolate the long-term signal, the researchers filtered out these natural influences from observational data. The approach helps reveal the underlying warming trend more clearly.“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 analysis combined five widely used global temperature datasets, including records maintained by NASA, NOAA, HadCRUT, Berkeley Earth and ERA5.After removing the effects of natural variability, the results consistently showed a sharp increase in the warming trend beginning around 2013 or 2014. According to the researchers, the evidence of acceleration is statistically robust across all datasets examined.“The adjusted data show an acceleration of global warming since 2015 with a statistical certainty of over 98 percent, consistent across all data sets examined and independent of the analysis method chosen,” explains Stefan Rahmstorf, PIK researcher and lead author of the study.Acceleration now visibleThe study also examined the unusually warm years of 2023 and 2024. After correcting for the influence of El Niño and the recent solar maximum, both years become slightly cooler in the adjusted datasets but remain the warmest years in the instrumental record.To determine whether the warming rate had changed over time, the researchers applied two statistical approaches. One method analyzed the long-term temperature trend using a quadratic model, while another used a piecewise linear model designed to identify when a shift in the warming rate occurred.Both methods detected a similar change in the pace of warming beginning in the early 2010s. The researchers emphasize that the study focuses on identifying the statistical acceleration itself rather than explaining the exact reasons behind it.However, the findings are broadly consistent with climate model projections that suggest warming could intensify as greenhouse gas concentrations rise.“If the warming rate of the past 10 years continues, it would lead to a long-term exceedance of the 1.5°C limit of the Paris Agreement before 2030,” says Stefan Rahmstorf. “How quickly the Earth continues to warm ultimately depends on how rapidly we reduce global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels to zero.”The study was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Climate Change Climate Data Analysis Global Warming Paris Agreement PIK Study Temperature Datasets
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