Rate Of Global Warming Up 50% In Past 15 Years Compared To Previous 4 Decades; AMOC Shutdown "Likely" In 20-30 Years

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. 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.

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Global warming is most pronounced in the Arctic, and that is melting a lot more ice and sending more freshwater into the North Atlantic than currently estimated by most climate models, Hansen said. That inflow of water could have dire consequences, particularly for the ocean current that warms much of Western Europe. A “shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is likely within the next 20-30 years, unless actions are taken to reduce global warming,” the researchers wrote. Their warning about AMOC contradicts the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), they added. The IPCC is the United Nations entity charged with assessing climate science and exploring policy options, and its most recent global assessment, in 2021, concluded that the AMOC will slow in a warming climate, but did not find it likely the current would shut down this century.

The AMOC is “the ocean conveyor that carries a huge amount of heat into the Northern Hemisphere,” Hansen said Tuesday. “If it shuts down, the heat stays in the Southern Hemisphere and will lock in many meters of sea level rise.” “We can adapt to more extreme heat waves, droughts, storms and floods, and minimize their impact,” he said. “But the main issue is the sleeping giant, the point of no return, the danger of an AMOC shutdown and large sea level rise.”

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04022025/james-hansen-research-documents-global-warming-acceleration/