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Sure, the climate of the Earth has always been changing. We know, for example, that in the past there were times when much of the Earth was covered with ice, and other times when it was much warmer than it is today.
There are literally millions of factors that all contribute to the climate of the planet, and it is impossible for scientists to take them all into account. This is what makes the work of climate scientists do hard. It is also what makes it so easy to dismiss their warnings since skeptics can simply say ‘the climate has always been changing’ and then not worry about the environment at all.
A new study that has been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, however, shows that not only is the global climate warming, but it is doing so at a faster pace than ever before, and it is not because of common factors like solar activity or volcanos.
The study gathered global temperature datasets from NASA, NOAA, HadCRUT, Berkeley Earth, and ERA5, which are five of the most reputable sources for this type of information. They then closely analyzed the information and found that in the decade of data from 2015 to 2025, the global average temperature went up by 0.35 °C (0.63 °F). This is significant because on average from 1970 to 2015, it went up just under 0.2 °C (0.36 °F) per decade on average.
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In a statement about the study, co-author and US statistics expert Grant Foster said:
“We can now demonstrate a strong and statistically significant acceleration of global warming since around 2015.”
The lead author of the study, Stefan Rahmstorf is a researcher with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). In the same statement, he said:
“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.”
While analyzing the data, the team also accounted for certain natural factors that can cause sudden but temporary changes in temperature, including El Nino events, volcanic eruptions, and more. Foster explained:
“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.”
What may make this study even more important is the fact that they did not attempt to assign any blame for the increased rate of warming that they found. Of course, man made carbon emissions and other similar factors are at the very least a likely contributor, this study is only attempting to provide almost indisputable proof that the temperature is rising and at a rate never seen before since records have been kept.
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No matter what the cause (or more likely, what combination of many causes), this is a serious issue to consider for everyone living on the Earth. Rahmstorf commented:
“If the warming rate of the past 10 years continues, it would lead to a long-term exceedance of the 1.5 [°C] (2.7 [°F]) limit of the Paris agreement before 2030.”
That limit identified by the Paris agreement was the generally agreed upon level where much more serious impacts to humans from the climates could be expected. Those living on the coast and in poorer areas of the world would be the first to see the escalating effects, but they would not end there.
The data in this study is clear, but the real question is what, if anything, will people do in response to it.
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