New calculations following the announcement that 2015 was the hottest year on record show that there is only a 0.01% chance that global warming is the cause of natural variations in the planet’s cliamte. This means that scientists are now 99.9% sure that humans are the cause of increasing global temperatures.
The new data is an increase from the only 95% certainty that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in 2013.
Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, part of the research team at the Potsdam Institute for Climae Impact Research in Germany says that “natural climate variations just can’t explain the observes recent global heat records, but manmade global warming can.”
Professor Rahmstorf and his team have conducted statistical analysis of real-world measurements and computer simulations. In doing this they were able to compare natural climate variability versus human-caused change.
As the UN World Meterological Organization announced this month, 15 of the 16 hottest years on record have happened since the year 2000. This information has led scientists to believe that the increasing record-breaking temperatures are building on each other and are not independent of previous years.
The new data states that there is a one in 650 million chance that the run of record-breaking years was vanishing.
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