2 min readMar 14, 2026 06:41 AM IST First published on: Mar 14, 2026 at 06:41 AM IST In 2023, scientists began debating the need to quantify the extent of global warming. Natural fluctuations, such as El Niño, made it difficult to ascertain if the faster rise in temperatures was due to climate change. Now, an analysis by Stefan Rahmstorf of the University of Potsdam, Germany, and US statistician Grant Foster has confirmed the links between the two. The researchers isolated the influence of phenomena such as El Niño, volcanic eruptions and solar irradiance to affirm that the pace of global warming has doubled since 2014, compared to the decade before it. Their study, published in Geophysical Research Letters a few days ago, reckons that the Paris Pact’s target of keeping temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees Celsius below pre-industrial levels could be out of reach by 2030. The study comes in the wake of a Nature paper that concludes that sea-level rise — caused by global heating — could be far higher than previously …