TIME, in a recent article, “The Planet is Heating Faster Than Ever Before,” claims that global warming has dramatically accelerated since 2015. This is demonstrably false. [some emphasis, links added]
Observational satellite data disagree with that claim, showing short-term variability driven by natural, short-lived events, with current temperatures now below the 2015–2016 El Niño peak.
In addition, proxy data from the past also show many periods over which temperatures shifted much more rapidly and steeply, both upwards and downwards, than during the recent period of modest warming.
The TIME article cites research that claims warming has nearly doubled in pace since 2015, representing a sharp acceleration and warning the world could cross 1.5°C of warming within a few years.
The claim rests on statistical adjustments that “filter out” natural variability such as El Niño and volcanic effects. That filtering is central to the narrative.
The acceleration appears after removing natural influences from the temperature record, which are clearly displayed in the raw data.
When we examine the observational satellite record itself, shown below, the story looks very different.
The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) Version 6.1 global lower troposphere dataset shows a long-term warming trend of +0.16°C per decade from January 1979 through February 2026. That trend has remained essentially stable for years.
There is no visible post-2015 inflection point in the long-term slope.
The chart shows the strong 2015–2016 El Niño spike rising above +0.7°C relative to the 1991–2020 mean. After that peak, temperatures declined. The most recent value — +0.39°C in February 2026 — remains well below that earlier El Niño high-water mark in 2016.
If warming had truly “doubled” in rate beginning in 2015, today’s anomalies should sit well above the 2016 peak. They do not.
It is also important to understand what caused some of the more recent spikes in the record. The unusually warm values in 2024 stand out in the UAH time series.
Those occurred in the wake of the 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption, which injected an unprecedented amount of water vapor into the stratosphere.
That injection temporarily enhanced radiative forcing, aka the greenhouse effect, because water vapor is in fact the strongest greenhouse gas. It was a short-term perturbation — not evidence of a structural acceleration in the underlying greenhouse-driven trend.
The UAH report itself describes 2024 as “anomalously warm,” and the data show a return toward the longer-term trend through 2025 and into early 2026. That behavior — spike and partial retreat — is characteristic of natural variability superimposed on gradual warming.
TIME’s framing relies heavily on adjusted surface datasets where natural influences are mathematically removed.
But climate is a long-term average of what actually happens in the real world, including El Niño events, volcanic eruptions, and short-term atmospheric changes.
Removing those factors to produce a smoothed “underlying” curve does not demonstrate that the observable climate system has entered a new accelerated regime. However, it does conveniently serve to advance the human-caused global warming narrative.
The long-term satellite trend remains modest and steady at +0.16°C per decade.
That is not a doubling. It is not a sharp upward trend; it is a continuation of a decades-long gradual increase punctuated by temporary spikes and dips.
Climate change is measured over decades, not from one El Niño peak to the next. When the full satellite record is considered — including the 2016 peak, the 2024 anomaly, and the current February 2026 value — the claim that the planet is heating “faster than ever before” since 2015 is not supported by the observational data.
Paleo-climate proxy data doesn’t support this claim, which shows much more significant temperature shifts over short periods, multiple times throughout history, long before humans began emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The first takeaway from this article is that TIME needs some basic fact-checkers with an understanding of the English language. Data clearly demonstrates that the present warming is not “faster than ever before,” and certainly not larger.
The UAH record shows gradual warming with natural variability superimposed. It does not show runaway acceleration.
If TIME had bothered to look at the actual data rather than uncritically regurgitating a press release, perhaps, if they were honest, it would have published a significantly different story — one with a far less alarming and patently inaccurate headline.
Read more at Climate Realism
It is sad how desperate conservative writers had become they now make more false climate science claims than the liberals do and that was quite a big target to exceed
the usual conservative lies to claim that CO2 does little or nothing but this lie is more sophisticated
the author cherry picks a brief very strong el nino temperature spike years ago and then claims it hasn’t been exceeded so the temperature is not rising
this is dishonest data mining not an honest trend line
Honest Comparison of UAH Temperature Trends:
Prior 30-Year Trend:
For much of the satellite era, the observed trend was consistently cited near
+0.125 C. per decade.
Recent 10-Year Acceleration:
Since approximately 2015, multiple analyses—including those using UAH data—have identified a “near-doubling” of the warming pace in the global climate system. In the UAH dataset specifically, recent 30-year rolling trends have reportedly accelerated
from roughly 0.125 C. to 0.175 C. per decade.
that is called acceleration which the author is denying
without that data mining the uah data do show acceleration
It may not be dangerous acceleration but it is acceleration
and the surface measurements show the same thing
the rise in the global average temperature in the past 50 years is the fastest in the past 5000 years and likely the fastest rise in the past 10,000 years
Why don’t simply acknowledge that albedo variation is an excellent predictor of mean global temperature? No need to invoke stupid greenhouse forcing. There is an elephant in the room and almost no one sees it.
the majority of the warming since 1975 is at night which is not affected by albedo even though albedo change does cause most of the warming in the day. mainly the reduction of air pollution since 1980