The Planet is Heating Faster Than Ever Before, New Research Shows

The pace of global warming has nearly doubled since 2015, a new study published today in Geophysical Research Letters has found—meaning that we could breach the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures before 2030. 

Between 1970 and 2015, global mean surface temperature tended to follow a steady trend, rising at an average rate of 0.2°C per decade. But by 2015, that changed—over the past ten years, the world has been heating at a rate of about 0.35°C per decade.

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All 10 of the hottest years on record have been since 2015. Recent years have broken temperature records—2023 and 2024 were Earth’s hottest on record, with global temperatures exceeding an average 1.5°C in 2024. It’s worth noting, however, that to warm beyond the 1.5°C limit of the Paris Climate Accord, this level would need to be exceeded not for a single year but for an average over 20 years.That said, breaches of 1.5°C for a month or a year are early signs of getting perilously close to exceeding the long-term limit, according to the United Nations.

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The impact of a warming world is already being felt across the globe—from more frequent and intense natural disasters to warmer temperatures. The impacts only stand to get worse: a separate study published earlier this week in the journal Nature found that, on average, coastal sea levels are eight inches to a foot higher than many maps and models of the world’s coastlines indicate—meaning that hundreds of millions more people are closer to experiencing rising sea levels than previously estimated. 

The researchers of today’s study adjusted the data to account for short-term natural fluctuations in global temperature caused by factors like El Niño, volcanic eruptions, and solar cycles. This allowed them to isolate the role that climate change had in driving the rise in temperatures. The result revealed a clear acceleration of global warming since 2015—with a statistical certainty of over 98%.

“We can now demonstrate a strong and statistically significant acceleration of global warming since around 2015,” Grant Foster, statistician and co-author of the study, said in a press release. “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.”

Read more: The Oceans Were Hotter Than Ever in 2025

The study also showed that the last decade’s rate of warming is higher than in any previous decade since the beginning of instrumental records in 1880. The study did not investigate any specific causes for the acceleration. 

If the warming seen over the last 10 years continues, it would lead to a long-term exceedance of the 1.5°C limit of the Paris Agreement before 2030, the researchers note. Stefan Rahmstorf, researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and lead author of the study noted in a press release that the outcome we see will largely depend on whether or not ambitious action is taken around the world. While global warming is likely irreversible on human timescales, studies show that if humanity reaches a point of zero carbon emissions, further global warming can be stopped.

“How quickly the Earth continues to warm ultimately depends on how rapidly we reduce global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels to zero,” said Rahmstorf.