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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/06/humanity-heating-planet-faster-than-ever-before-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 (2.7F) 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 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.”
The blanket of carbon pollution smothering the Earth has heated the planet by
about 1.4C since preindustrial levels, compounded by a recent drop in cooling
sulphur pollutants that had provided temporary relief. A study 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 Hausfather. “[This] should be worrying as the world hurtles toward
crossing 1.5C later this decade.”"
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
