A new study shows that the speed of warming in the past 100 years is unprecedented, and by the end of this century the planet will have gotten hotter than ever.
Bloomberg News reports:
The Earth is warmer now than during 70 to 80 percent of the time stretching back to the last Ice Age, according to researchers from Oregon State and Harvard universities who studied data from more than 73 global sites.
The findings also show that temperature-change rates are accelerating, Shaun Marcott, a scientist at Oregon State in Corvallis and one of the paper’s authors, said yesterday in an interview. The study was published today by the journal Science.
The research is the longest global reconstruction of temperature records over the last 11,300 years and mirrors results covering the past 2,000 years. The study may provide additional context in refuting “arguments that what we’re experiencing today is part of some natural climate variability,” Marcott said.
"The decade from 1900 to 1909 was colder than 95% of the last 11,300 years," according to CNN, which obtained a copy of the study. "Between 2000 and 2009, it was hotter than about 75% of the last 11,300 years." “From 1900 to 2000, we go from the cold end of that spectrum to the warm end of that spectrum -- the rates of change we’re seeing are unprecedented,” Marcott said. “We should still be cooling, but we’re not.”