Author: ["Steven J. Smith","James Edmonds","Corinne A. Hartin","Anupriya Mundra","Katherine Calvin"]
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Abstract
Knowledge of the near-term rate of change is needed for adaptation. The rate at which climate change is occurring, over 40-year periods, is found to be unprecedented in the past 1,000 years. Regionally, Europe, North America and the Arctic are above the global average. Anthropogenically driven climate changes, which are expected to impact human and natural systems, are often expressed in terms of global-mean temperature1. The rate of climate change over multi-decadal scales is also important, with faster rates of change resulting in less time for human and natural systems to adapt2. We find 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. The rate of global-mean temperature increase in the CMIP5 (ref. 3) 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. Regional rates of change in Europe, North America and the Arctic are higher than the global average. Research on the impacts of such near-term rates of change is urgently needed.Cite this article
Smith, S., Edmonds, J., Hartin, C. et al. Near-term acceleration in the rate of temperature change. Nature Clim Change 5, 333–336 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2552 