Former NASA Researcher: We are in the early stage of a climate emergency. Global warming is accelerating
"Global warming is accelerating faster than we currently understand and it will result in surpassing a key temperature threshold in this decade".
These statements come as a result of research led by James Hansen, an American scientist who first alerted the world to the greenhouse effect, as reported by The Guardian.
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Earth's climate is more sensitive to changes caused by humans than scientists have realized so far. This means that a "dangerous" surge of warming will occur, pushing the world to be 1.5 °C warmer than it was, on average, in pre-industrial times by the 2020s and 2 °C warmer by 2050, predicts the study published on November 2nd.
This alarming acceleration of global warming, which would mean that the world exceeds the internationally agreed-upon 1.5 °C threshold set in the Paris Agreement, is expected much sooner than anticipated. There is a risk of a world "less tolerable for humanity, with greater climate extremes", according to the study led by Hansen, the former NASA scientist who issued a fundamental warning about climate change to the U.S. Congress in the 1980s.
Hansen stated that there is a massive amount of global warming "in the pipeline" due to the ongoing burning of fossil fuels, the Earth being "very sensitive" to the impact of this phenomenon—much more sensitive than the best estimates presented by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
"We would be damn fools and bad scientists if we didn't expect an acceleration of global warming", said Hansen.
The inquiry into whether the pace of global warming is on the rise has been a topic of intense discussion among scientists this year, especially considering the months of unprecedented high temperatures.
Hansen emphasizes an imbalance between the incoming solar energy and the outgoing energy from Earth, which has "increased considerably", nearly doubling over the past decade. This intensification, he warned, could lead to a disastrous rise in sea levels for the coastal cities of the world.
The new research, which includes peer-reviewed works by Hansen's colleagues and other scientists, argues that this imbalance, Earth's higher climate sensitivity, and an acceleration of pollution caused by waterborne transport, which has increased the amount of sulfur particles in the air reflecting sunlight, are causing an escalation of global warming.
"We are in the early stage of a climate emergency", warns the specialist. "Such an acceleration is dangerous in a climate system that is already out of balance. Reversing the trend is essential—we must cool the planet—for the sake of preserving coastlines and saving the coastal cities of the world".
