New Delhi: Global warming has accelerated significantly since 2015, according to a study that accounts for natural fluctuations in warming rate and influences of El Nino events, volcanic eruptions and solar cycle variation on temperature data.
Researchers, including those from Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said short-term natural fluctuations in global temperature caused by El Nino, volcanic eruptions, and solar cycles can mask changes in the long-term rate of warming.
The study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters analysed five global temperature datasets, including those managed by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“We filter out known natural influences in the observational data, so that the ‘noise’ is reduced, making the underlying long-term warming signal more clearly visible,” co-author Grant Foster, a US statistics expert, said.
“The resulting adjusted and thus less “noisy” data show that there has been acceleration with over 98 per cent confidence, with faster warming in (more than) the last 10 years than during any previous decade,” the authors wrote.
Statistical confidence is the chance that a specific statistical method will correctly capture the true population value upon repeated sampling.
Subtracting the estimated influence of El Nino events, volcanic eruptions and solar variations from the datasets makes the global temperature curve less variable, which “then shows a statistically significant acceleration of global warming since about the year 2015,” the team said. They also found that the years 2023 and 2024, which were exceptionally warm, become somewhat cooler, but remain the two warmest years since the beginning of instrumental records.