Europe is warming up faster Global warming could progress faster according to AI forecast

Will the climate crisis hit us even faster than previously assumed? Analyses based on artificial intelligence at least suggest so.

If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, temperatures in Europe could increase by at least three degrees by 2060 compared to pre-industrial levels. This is the conclusion drawn by a research team from an AI-supported analysis. Europe is warming faster than the global average: in 2023 it was already 2.3 degrees warmer - globally it was around 1.48 degrees, according to data from the Copernicus climate service.

According to the new analysis, global warming is also likely to progress faster than many previous simulations in most other regions of the world. The AI used for the analysis learns from ten global climate models and also refines the predictions based on measurement data from previous years, as the team led by Elizabeth Barnes from Colorado State University in Fort Collins reports in the journal "Environmental Research Letters". "AI is becoming an incredibly powerful tool for reducing uncertainty in future predictions," said Barnes.

The socio-economic pathway SSP3-7.0 from the Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was taken as a basis. This scenario assumes that greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise significantly in a world characterized by conflict and nationalism. The observed temperature anomalies from 2023 were used to define the current climate status.

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Faster rise than usually assumed?

According to this, the 1.5-degree threshold could be reached by 2040 or earlier for all 34 regions considered, and even two degrees in 31 regions. In the evaluation for reaching three degrees above the pre-industrial average, 26 out of 34 regions exceeded the threshold in 2060, including the four regions in Europe. To date, forecasts for a global average temperature in this scenario and at this time have been below three degrees.

A second study using AI has also shown that global warming is likely to progress faster than calculated in many previous simulations. Temperatures of two or three degrees above the average for the period 1850 to 1899 will probably be reached much sooner than widely assumed.

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Limitation to 1.5 degrees unattainable

According to the analysis, the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels is now almost certainly unattainable. There is also a high risk that global warming will exceed the two-degree mark, even if humanity achieves a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to zero by the 2050s - which is the most optimistic scenario widely used in climate modeling. Previous studies had concluded that global warming could probably be kept below two degrees in this case, and Barnes, together with Noah Diffenbaugh from Stanford University, used AI to investigate how different paths to net-zero emissions affect temperature rise for the study presented in Geophysical Research Letters. If the world achieves net-zero emissions by 2050, the warmest single year of this century will most likely be at least half a degree hotter than 2023, the warmest year on record.

For a scenario in which emissions decline too slowly to reach net-zero emissions by 2100, Diffenbaugh and Barnes determined that the warmest year globally will most likely be three degrees warmer than the pre-industrial baseline scenario.

More adaptation urgently needed

The researchers emphasize that climate change will have a major impact in the coming decades, even if all efforts and investments in reducing greenhouse gas emissions are as successful as possible. "There is a real risk that without appropriate investment in adaptation, people and ecosystems will be exposed to climate conditions that are much more extreme than what they are currently prepared for," said Diffenbaugh.

Experts believe it is virtually certain that this year will replace last year as the warmest on record. Global average temperatures are expected to be more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, before humans began burning fossil fuels on a large scale. However, the Paris 1.5-degree target for containing the climate crisis is not yet considered to have been missed, as this is based on longer-term average values.

Self-reinforcing effect?

At the 2015 World Climate Conference in Paris, countries around the world agreed to limit global warming to below two degrees, but preferably to 1.5 degrees. The values have a high symbolic value, but according to experts, there is still no clear definition of the politically determined thresholds.

A team led by Helge Gössling from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven recently explained in the journal "Science" that there have recently been unusually high values for the solar radiation absorbed. One reason for this is that there were fewer reflective clouds at low altitudes. For the past year, satellite records showed the lowest value for low clouds since the year 2000.

According to the scientists, it is not yet clear what is causing the reduction in low clouds. It is possible that climate change itself could contribute significantly to this, they said. In this case, a stronger future warming is to be expected than previously assumed.

SDA