Global warming 'set to speed up to rates not seen for 1,000 years'
Global warming 'set to speed up to rates not seen for 1,000 years'
People need to brace themselves for accelerating climate change that could alter the way we live even over short time scales, scientists have warned.
New evidence suggests the rate at which temperatures are rising in the northern hemisphere could be 0.25C per decade by 2020 - a level not seen for at least 1,000 years.
Over the 900 years preceding the 20th century, 40-year warming trends rarely showed an average rate much higher than 0.1C per decade, the study found.
But by 2020 the rate was expected to have risen to an average of 0.25C per decade, give or take 0.05C.
I have two comments about this piece. The first is that the article bases its analysis on the IPCC's RCP 4.5 emissions scenario, when we are
actually following the RCP 8.5 trajectory - which is allmost twice as bad as RCP 4.5 over medium time frames, and even worse as we move through the second half of the century.
My other comment is that the rate of warming they show for the Arctic is about 2.5 times greater than their global "don't worry, be happy" number of 0.25C per decade. That's 0.65C per decade in the Arctic ... for the RCP4.5 scenario.
I'm left wondering what the Arctic warming rate will actually be as coast towards 2030 on our RCP 8.5 curve? Perhaps a whole degree per decade? Even more? In other words, just twenty years or less to add 2C of warming to the Arctic, over all that thawing, methane-riddled permafrost.
Paging Senator Snowball, your front-row seat is ready.
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