The trail of clues that our planet might be heating faster than we realised — SkimNews
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- Reform deputy leader Richard Tice shared a Telegraph article on X in July wrongly claiming cleaner air, not CO2, caused Britain's heatwaves — but the underlying science about aerosol masking of warming is real, the article notes.
- Sulphate aerosols from burning coal and oil reflect sunlight and have partially offset CO2-driven warming; emissions have fallen sharply in Europe, North America and China under clean-air policies such as the US Acid Rain Program of the early 1990s.
- Reto Knutti at ETH Zurich said that after stripping out El Niño and other natural fluctuations, 'it's pretty clear that the rate of warming has accelerated' — a conclusion echoed by a separate 2025 study.
- Climate physicist Piers Forster at the University of Leeds estimates declining aerosol pollution may now be adding around 0.05°C–0.1°C of warming per decade, against roughly 0.2°C per decade from greenhouse gases globally.
- Knutti's modeling analysis found simulations that best reproduce recent warming also show a climate roughly 25% more sensitive to CO2 than the average model — a direction supported by a 2024 Science paper on Earth's energy imbalance.
- Under current policies the world is on track for roughly 2.8°C of warming by 2100; if the higher sensitivity proves correct, the same emissions path could deliver closer to 3.5°C, Forster said.
- Earth's energy imbalance has roughly tripled over the past two decades and the oceans have warmed more than twice as fast in the past 20 years as between 1960 and 2005, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
Why it matters: Forster says if the higher climate sensitivity holds, the same emissions trajectory delivers roughly 3.5°C of warming by 2100 instead of the current 2.8°C projection — a half-degree difference that directly shrinks the remaining global carbon budget.
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