A study by the Potsdam Institute reveals that global warming has undergone a sharp acceleration over the last decade, reaching +0.35 degrees Celsius per decade.
Global warming is speeding up. Confirmation comes from a study published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters and carried out by researchers at the Potsdam Institute, who analysed statistical data from 1970 to the present day. According to the analysis, if the current rate remains unchanged in the coming years, the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold — the most ambitious target set by the Paris Agreement — will be breached by 2029.
According to the analysis, while the global average temperature rose steadily, decade after decade, between 1970 and 2015, an acceleration was subsequently recorded. During the first 45 years analysed, the increase never exceeded 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. Between 2015 and 2025, however, the figure reached 0.35 degrees Celsius.
"This is the first statistically significant evidence of an acceleration in the pace of climate warming," the study's authors explained to Bloomberg. One of them, climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf, explained that the data used were collected from the world's five most important databases on the subject: those of Nasa, Noaa, HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth and Copernicus.
To make the analysis even more precise, certain "contingent" natural factors that can influence the overall figure were removed. The impacts stemming from variations in solar activity, which are capable of altering the energy balance of the global climate system, were therefore subtracted. Likewise, account was taken of volcanic eruptions, as well as of El Niño — the cyclical phenomenon consisting of the warming of the surface temperature of the south-central and eastern Pacific Ocean — and volcanic eruptions once again.
"The most important finding is not so much how much the Earth's atmosphere is warming, but precisely the fact that it is warming more rapidly than in the past, and that the difference that has emerged is not negligible," commented Grant Foster, another author of the study, speaking to the think tank Carbon Brief.
It is not ruled out, however, from a scientific standpoint, that the acceleration recorded over the last decade could prove to be temporary, as climatologist Claudie Beaulieu pointed out to the Guardian. What does appear clear, though, is that climate warming is certainly not decreasing — as would be necessary if the targets set by the international community were to be met.
