Global Warming Accelerated in Past Decade, Study Finds

Researchers found that the Earth has warmed around 0.35C in the decade to 2025, compared to less than 0.2C per decade on average between 1970 and 2015.

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Global warming has accelerated significantly in the last decade, with temperatures rising faster since 2015 than in any previous decade on record, a new study has concluded.

While scientists long maintained that global temperatures had risen steadily since the 1970s, a recent streak of record-breaking heat has raised questions about whether that linear trend is shifting. The new paper, published Friday in Geophysical Research Letters, provides the first concrete evidence that global warming is actually accelerating.

Researchers found that the Earth has warmed around 0.35C in the decade to 2025, compared to less than 0.2C per decade on average between 1970 and 2015. Should warming continue at the rate of the past 10 years, the 1.5C global warming limit set in the Paris Agreement will be breached by the end of this decade, according to the study. “How quickly the Earth continues to warm ultimately depends on how rapidly we reduce global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels to zero,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

The past 11 years have been the warmest ever recorded, compared to the average before the Industrial Revolution, with the last three years including all of the top three warmest.

The burning of coal, natural gas, and oil for electricity and heat is the single-largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions. These are the primary drivers of global warming as they trap heat in the atmosphere and raise Earth’s surface temperature. Global fossil fuel consumption has more than doubled in the last 50 years, and so have emissions, reaching record high levels in 2025.

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