New research by an international team of climate scientists documents a surge of global warming during the past 15 years that risks shutting down a key ocean current by 2050.
During a webinar Tuesday discussing the study, the authors said the rate of global warming since 2010 has increased by more than 50 percent over the rate of warming in the preceding four decades, surging more than 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit (0.4 degrees Celsius) in just the past two years.
At the current rate, the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to somewhere between 2.7 degrees and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5-2 degrees Celsius) is pretty much dead, said James Hansen, a former NASA climate scientist who led the team and whose 1988 testimony to Congress was one of the early public warnings about the risks of greenhouse gas emissions.
We’re hiring!Please take a look at the new openings in our newsroom.See jobs
The increased rate of warming will intensify already deadly heatwaves and worsen both drought and flooding extremes, as well as speed up the spread of deadly diseases associated with warmer temperatures.
The shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC) discussed in the new paper would lead to a sudden surge of sea level rise along the East Coast, and bring crop-threatening climate extremes to parts of Europe, according to a 2024 study.
Scientists expected the global average temperature to start dropping this winter because parts of the tropical Pacific Ocean are in La Niña conditions, the cool phase of a cycle that can reduce the annual global average temperature by up to 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit.
Instead, temperatures continued to surge into 2025 with the warmest January on record—3.13 degrees Fahrenheit (1.74 degrees Celsius) above the pre-industrial baseline. Researchers have noted how the sustained warmth is unexpected.
January 2025 was quite unexpectedly the warmest January on record at 1.75C above preindustrial, beating the prior record set in 2024.
This is despite the presence of La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific, with the El Niño event of 2023/2024 long faded. www.theclimatebrink….[image or embed]— Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath.bsky.social) February 2, 2025 at 12:57 PM
As in other papers he published recently, Hansen said the new findings affirm that a key driver of the warming is the reduction of sulfate aerosol pollution over Northern Hemisphere oceans. That change, due to stricter shipping fuel regulations, has the effect of dimming the reflectivity of clouds and allowing more heat to reach the surface of the Earth.
Other research looking at the remarkable 0.7-degree Fahrenheit rise of the past two years found that the spike could be attributed to a combination of causes in addition to aerosol reductions, including a Pacific Ocean warm phase and decadal shifts of large-scale pressure patterns.
AMOC Shutdown?
Global warming is most pronounced in the Arctic, and that is melting a lot more ice and sending m