Steven J. Smith, James Edmonds, Corinne A. Hartin, Anupriya Mundra, Katherine Calvin

Nature Climate Change

Published date March 9, 2015

Near-term acceleration in the rate of temperature change

  • Finds that present trends in greenhouse-gas and aerosol emissions are now moving the Earth system into a regime in terms of multi-decadal rates of change that are unprecedented for at least the past 1,000 years
  • Finds the rate of global-mean temperature increase in the CMIP5 archive over 40-year periods increases to 0.25 ± 0.05 °C (1σ) per decade by 2020, an average greater than peak rates of change during the previous one to two millennia
  • Shows that regional rates of change in Europe, North America and the Arctic are higher than the global average
  • Asserts that research the impacts of such near-term rates of change is urgently needed