Global warming accelerating faster than ever, 1.5°C limit may be breached this decade

A new study from Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research warns that human-caused global warming is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, with the 1.5°C target set in the Paris Agreement potentially surpassed as early as this year, Dagbladet reports.

The research, published on Monday, reveals that the rate of warming has nearly doubled in the past decade compared to the 1970–2015 period. After adjusting for natural climate variations—such as solar cycles, volcanic activity, and El Niño—the study found the warming rate surged from below 0.2°C per decade to roughly 0.35°C per decade since 2013 or 2014. This marks the highest sustained warming rate since systematic records began in 1880.

“If the warming rate of the past decade persists, the 1.5°C limit will be exceeded long before 2030,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, co-author of the study and a researcher at the Potsdam Institute, in an interview with The Guardian. One dataset from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service suggests the threshold could be crossed as soon as 2026, while four other datasets project breaches in 2028 or 2029.

Rahmstorf emphasised that the pace of future warming “ultimately depends on how quickly we reduce CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels to zero.” His warnings echo those of Reidun Gangstø, a climatologist at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, who told Dagbladet in December that the world stands at a “sinister threshold.”

To isolate human influence, researchers filtered out natural variability—referred to as “noise”—from temperature records. The analysis confirmed an acceleration in warming starting around 2013–2014. Zeke Hausfather, a climatologist at Berkeley Earth not involved in the study, told The Guardian there is now “broad, though not universal, agreement” that warming has measurably accelerated in recent years. However, he noted uncertainty remains over how much of the recent spike stems from human activity versus natural fluctuations.

Norwegian climate researcher Bjørn Samset, a physicist at the Cicero Center for International Climate Research and a former lead author for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), concurred with the study’s core findings. “There’s no doubt that warming is now faster than before, that our CO₂ emissions are the primary cause, and that climate change is becoming more dramatic with each passing year,” Samset told Dagbladet. He criticised global inaction on emissions cuts and adaptation, warning that current warming “will persist through our lifetimes, our children’s, and our grandchildren’s—at the very least.”

Samset cautioned, however, against overusing the term “acceleration” in climate science. While temperatures have risen more rapidly in recent years, he said this does not necessarily confirm a structural shift in the rate of human-induced warming. The study’s authors acknowledge that even if emissions were halted immediately, some warming would continue due to the long-lived nature of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.

The findings arrive amid a surge in climate-related disasters, including record wildfires in California, deadly flooding in Texas, and extreme heatwaves in cities like New York. Scientists link these events to the broader trend of rising global temperatures, which have already reached approximately 1.3°C above pre-industrial levels.