A new study reveals that our planet Earth is on the apex of a new era where the increase in the rate of global temperatures has the possibility of reaching a level that the people in the planet have not seen in the last 10 centuries, as published in the Journal Nature Climate Change. Even though this rapid rate would be affecting the whole world and all its countries, it is being depicted that the Arctic region would be affected the most, given the fact it is already melting away.
This study was conducted by a team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and according to them by the year 2020, the rate at which temperatures are accelerating; this could extend over 0.45 ° Fahrenheit every 10 years, surpassing the historical limits of the last 1,000 years. Furthermore, if the greenhouse gas emission keeps on continuing in this incessant manner, then there is a possibility of the rate of warming reaching 0.7° Fahrenheit every decade.
Steven Smith, the lead author of the paper said, “Essentially, the world is entering a new regime where what is normal is going to continue to change and it’s changing at a rate that natural processes might not be able to keep up with. We need to better understand what the effects of this will be and how to prepare for them.”
The researchers initiated the assessment of temperature change rates by calculating how rapidly the temperatures altered from 1850 to 1930, a time when greenhouse gas concentration on our atmosphere was low. The data was then measured against temperature data of the last 2,000 years. This was acquired by the examining the nature such as tree rings, ice cores and corals for testing the validity of the model that the researchers employed.
This model helped scientists calculate rates of change from 1971 to 2020 and it was found that that not only that the majority of the regions worldwide are totally outside their natural range of temperature, but regional rates of change in Europe, North America and the Arctic are much greater than global average.
The Arctic region being the fastest warming part of the world is undergoing a rapid thinning and shrinking of its ice cover and study reveals that it will be witnessing a rise in temperature by 1.1° Fahrenheit every decade by the year 2040.
Michael Mann, a professor of meteorology at the Pennsylvania State University stated, “The authors have demonstrated that we are currently headed into uncharted waters when it comes to the rate of climate change we are now seeing.”
