According to the Washington Post, global temperatures have continued to rise over the past few decades, but many scientists have pointed out that the current rate of warming has reached unprecedented levels. A new analysis based on a NASA data set shows that the fastest rate of warming on record has occurred over the past 30 years.
The analysis covered global average surface temperature data from 1880 to 2025. Robert Rohde, chief scientist at Berkeley Earth, warns that we are no longer on our past climate path and something fundamental has changed. Data show that in the past decade, global temperatures have increased by nearly 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade, an increase of approximately 42%.
For a long time, part of the warming effect caused by greenhouse gas emissions has been "masked" by sulfate aerosols. While these tiny particles can cause heart and lung disease, they also reflect sunlight, creating a significant cooling effect around the world. Scientists estimate that these aerosols previously offset about 0.5 degrees Celsius of warming. However, starting about two decades ago, countries began to vigorously combat aerosol pollution, especially sulfate aerosols. Global sulfur dioxide emissions have fallen by about 40% since the mid-2000s, as the energy mix shifts from coal and oil to wind and solar, and emissions fall significantly in countries such as China. In addition, a new international regulation in recent years has cut sulfur emissions from ships by approximately 85%, further exacerbating this effect.
Declining aerosols explain some of the accelerated warming, but some researchers believe aerosols and natural variability alone cannot fully explain the record high temperatures of the past few years. A paper published in the journal Science at the end of 2024 pointed out that about 0.2 degrees Celsius (or about 13%) of the record high temperatures in 2023 cannot be attributed to factors such as aerosols. The study found that Earth's coverage of low-level clouds, which normally reflect sunlight, has decreased, leading to further warming. This change in cloud cover may be partly related to aerosols, since clouds tend to form around particles in the atmosphere; but it may also be a feedback loop triggered by warming temperatures themselves - rising temperatures make it harder for low-level clouds to form.
Scientists are currently facing two very different future scenarios: If the current record warming is mainly due to changes in aerosol pollution, then the acceleration will stop once aerosol pollution drops to zero, and the earth will return to the previous slower warming rate; but if it is due to cloud feedback loops, the acceleration is likely to continue, bringing increasingly worsening heat waves, storms and droughts. As the report points out, scientists thought they understood global warming until anomalous data emerged over the past three years. Recent climate anomalies have been evident everywhere. Just last month, temperatures in Nuuk, Greenland, were more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit above average, while temperatures in parts of Australia have topped 120 degrees Fahrenheit in a record-breaking heat wave.