Since the 1960s, each decade has been warmer than the one before, just as many climate models predicted. However, there is debate in the scientific community about whether the rate of warming will accelerate or not in the coming period, especially in light of the “climate chaos” of the past year.
Climate models have predicted some degree of acceleration
James Hansen, the former NASA climate scientist who published one of the most important early studies warning about global warming, published a report a few months ago in which he said:
The rate of warming has increased by at least 50 percent since 2010.
This was met with skepticism by his colleagues, although some climate models predicted some degree of acceleration.
Hansen's study isn't far-fetched, but the literature doesn't particularly support it Zeke Hausfather, a climate researcher at Berkeley, told the Associated Press Science Alert Cites online scientific portal.
the Scientific reports A new study published in a specialized journal led by Audrey Ménière, an ecologist at Paul Sabatier University in France, has now found signs of accelerating rising ocean temperatures.
It has not yet been proven that global warming will accelerate, despite evidence that it may increase – Researchers writing about their studies.
Menier and his team calculated that the warming of our oceans in the 1960s was a constant 0.15 watts per square meter (W/m2) per decade. But since then, this rate has increased to 0.91 W/m2.
Experts caution that there are large variations in their results and that data from previous years is less reliable, but their findings are consistent across several different sets of data. According to a recent review of the literature, the rate of ocean warming between 1971 and 2020 was 0.48 W/m2, while between 2006 and 2020 this value increased to 0.76 W/m2.
Although there is increasing evidence that global warming is accelerating, it is not necessarily worse than we thought Housefather explained to The Washington Post. “Scientists were largely expecting something like this.”
We go beyond global commitment to borders
There are several theories about what could cause this potential acceleration, ranging from changes in cloud cover and significant decreases in sea ice (creating a feedback system) to natural fluctuations associated with increased contributions from human activities.
According to Menier et al., the acceleration of global warming in the long term corresponds qualitatively to increases in carbon dioxide concentrations and decreases in aerosol concentrations over the same period. However, they believe that more studies are needed to properly attribute these changes.
Current data suggest that we will soon exceed the global commitment to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, regardless of whether the increase in temperatures accelerates.
We are already feeling the consequences, or at least witnessing them Climate researchers noted. “Excess energy in our atmosphere pulls climate systems to one extreme or another like a wobbly top before tipping over, potentially leading to floods, fires and deadly storms.”
According to Hansen, there will be no discussion on the issue at the end of next spring, and we must prepare for that.
