Climate: The Planet Is Warming Twice as Fast

Climate change is no longer advancing at the same pace. A study published in early March shows that global temperatures have surged since 2015. By analyzing several decades of climate data, researchers demonstrate that the planet is warming now at an unprecedented rate, bringing the world dangerously close to the Paris Agreement’s critical 1.5°C threshold.

Acceleration of Global Warming Confirmed by a Study

On March 6, 2026, an international team of researchers published a scientific study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters(1) showing that global warming has accelerated over the past decade. The scientists analyzed several global temperature series to assess the true long-term evolution of the climate.

To conduct this analysis, they used five major international climate databases, including those from NASA, NOAA, Berkeley Earth, HadCRUT, and the European ERA5 system, according to Carbon Brief(2). These series span temperature observations dating back to the late 19th century.

The results indicate a clear break in the recent trend. Over the past ten years, the planet has warmed at roughly 0.35°C per decade (about 0.63°F per decade), compared with about 0.20°C per decade (0.36°F) between 1970 and 2015. In other words, the speed of warming has nearly doubled. For the study’s authors, this is the fastest rate observed since the start of modern instrumental records, which date back to around 1880, according to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

L one of the authors, climatologist Grant Foster, emphasizes the robustness of the observed signal. “We can now demonstrate a pronounced acceleration of global warming since about 2015 with high statistical significance,” he explains.

How Scientists Isolated the Acceleration

To reach this conclusion, the researchers used a statistical method designed to isolate human-caused warming. Indeed, global temperatures also fluctuate naturally due to phenomena such as El Niño, volcanic eruptions, or fluctuations in solar activity.

The scientists therefore removed these natural influences from the climate data to better reveal the underlying trend. Grant Foster notes that the objective was to reduce what climate scientists call “climate noise.” “We filter out the known natural influences in the observational data to reduce the noise and make the long-term warming signal more visible,” he explains, according to the Potsdam Institute. This method helps to better distinguish the effect of human greenhouse gas emissions on the planet’s global temperature.

Global Warming: A Record-Breaking Decade for the Planet

This acceleration comes within a climate context that is already deeply concerning. The past years have been marked by a string of global heat records. According to Time, the ten hottest years on record all date from 2015 onward. The year 2024 even surpassed the 1.5°C mark above pre-industrial levels on an annual average, though this single-year overshoot does not yet constitute a sustained crossing of the Paris Agreement threshold.

Today, the planet has already warmed by about 1.4°C (approximately 2.5°F) above the pre-industrial era, reports The Guardian.(3) Several climate scientists now estimate that a recent acceleration in warming is detectable in the data. “There is now broad agreement that an acceleration in warming has been detected in recent years,” explains climatologist Zeke Hausfather.

One of the major implications of this acceleration concerns the Paris Agreement’s central goal: limiting warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F). If the pace observed over the past decade continues, a sustained crossing of this threshold could occur before the end of the decade. According to the estimates presented in the study, some databases suggest crossing as early as 2026, while others place this moment between 2028 and 2029, according to Carbon Brief.