Global warming is accelerating. The rise in global temperature has been steady at a rate of less than 0.2 °C per decade between 1970 and 2015. Over the past 10 years, since 2015, this increase has accelerated to about 0.35 °C per decade, the highest rate since 1880 when humanity started to have an impact on the Earth’s temperature.

These latest findings were published recently in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. In their analysis, the researchers excluded natural fluctuations such as El Niño events, volcanic eruptions and solar variations from the data, so this acceleration reflects man-made global warming.

The analysis is based on five established global temperature datasets. All these datasets show that we will cross the 1.5 °C limit before 2030.

Over the last years, the policy to reduce atmospheric pollution has been very effective and has reduced the load of cooling aerosols in the atmosphere. It is likely that this reduction has contributed to the acceleration of global warming.

Source: Foster and Rahmstorf, 2026. Geophysical Research Letters 53.