Warming could hit rates unseen in 1,000 years

We are standing on the edge of a new world where warming is poised to accelerate at rates unseen for at least 1,000 years.

That’s the main finding of a paper published March 9 in Nature Climate Change, which looked at the rate of temperature change over 40-year periods. The new research also shows that the Arctic, North America, and Europe will be the first regions to transition to a new climate, underscoring the urgent need for adaptation planning. Historical records show temperatures have typically fluctuated up or down by about 0.2 °F per decade over the past 1,000 years. But trends over the past 40 years have been decidedly up, with warming approaching 0.4 °F per decade. That’s still within historical bounds of the past—but just barely.

By 2020, warming rates should eclipse historical bounds of the past 1,000 years—and likely at least 2,000 years—and keep rising.
Faster and faster. That's called "acceleration".

Prediction by extrapolation is chancy; extrapolating accelerating phenomena is just a fool's game.


http://qz.com/359620/global-warming-could-hit-rates-unseen-in-1000-years/

..."and I'm just gettin warmed up!" -- Mother Nature
 



... "The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences." - Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm