Global Warming Grows Steadily by 0.2°C per Decade
(Sustainabilityenvironment.com) – How much slowed the global warming race thanks to the climate efforts of the last 10 years? Zero. The 2015 Paris agreement was a watershed for diplomacy, but not (yet) for the planet’s climate. Global warming is going steady, incredibly steady. Not just in the last 10 years. If you look at the data from 1970 to today, you see a fairly regular increase of 0.2°C per decade. And there’s a surprise in the 2021 data.
This is stated in a study recently published in Nature Communications. Who got this data after developing a new way to distinguish anthropogenic global warming from natural climate variability. The advantage is that this calculation method provides reliable estimates based on only 10 years of data, instead of the 20 that were needed so far. Translated: We now have a more precise yardstick for whether climate policies work. Arrived at more accurate estimates on the impact of climate action.
A more precise method
“Common wisdom is that it may take up to 20 years before we can detect with certainty that a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is also successfully reducing the rate of global warming”. Explains Bjørn Hallvard Samset of the CICERO Center for International Climate Research. “Our new method cuts this time in half, promising a faster response time for policy makers working on crucial mitigation efforts. At the same time, we can reveal that global warming still is on a steady course, with no acceleration or slowdown”.
By linking ocean surface temperature patterns to global average temperature fluctuations, CICERO researchers have been able to distinguish the impact of phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña on the global mercury column trend. These events can cause a natural temperature variation of up to 0.5°C.
Re-evaluating all the climate data of recent years, researchers have found that 2021, with this new calculation method, would be the second hottest year in history and not the 6 or 7 as calculated by Copernicus and NASA. A short distance from the hot 2020. And warmer than the exceptional 2016, the second year in the ranking.