00:59 The Climate Is Starting To Change Faster Over the last 40 years, a new study says climate change has clearly changed Earth's temperatures. Scientists are saying it's faster than before. Matt Sampson has the details.

Not only is climate changing faster than it has in the past 1,000 years, but the rate of temperature change is also starting to speed up, with an average rate of change of 0.2 to 0.6 degrees Celsius every decade. That’s according to a study from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). “We’re entering into a new phase of the climate,” lead researcher Steve Smith told weather.com.

Smith and PNNL colleagues looked at more than two dozen climate models, comparing 40-year periods of temperature change — the shortest window to see the “human signal” or manmade impacts — for the past 2,000 years. Their first task: To understand whether temperature range fluctuations were normal ebb and flow or whether something else altogether was happening.

The models, which had accurately replicated historical temperature rates changes, showed ranges far beyond standard variability. “Under natural conditions, temperatures sometimes increase and sometimes they decrease,” Smith said. “Now we’re in a regime where essentially in North America and Europe and Asia, you don’t see any instances where temperatures decrease. It’s all increasing. We’ve completely shifted out of that range.”

<img class="styles__noscript__2rw2y" src="https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/CCRate2.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0" srcset="https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/CCRate2.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 400w, https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/CCRate2.jpg?v=ap&w=980&h=551&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 800w" > The rate of temperature change is rising and will continue to do so, as seen here with the thick gray line. This model depicts rates measured in 40-year windows of time, a time frame that reflects lifespans of people. (PNNL) Seeing just how quickly temperatures have and will continue to shift hit a nerve for Smith. “The fact that this rate of change was accelerating right at this point in time in these model results, that was surprising,” he said. “It’s very striking when you see that.” What’s also striking is the notion that within the next decade, we could start to feel real impacts.

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Smith gave as an example growing zones, or where each crop can thrive given the climate and the plant hardiness. Wine production worldwide has already experienced a shift in where the best soil for some grapes resides. “Famous wine regions like Bordeaux, they have specific flavors that come from a combination of the soil and the climate. Now the climate is changing,” Herbert Formayer of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences told weather.com last year. “If the temperatures increase, they will not be able to get the [same] characteristics of the wine.”

It’s not just grapes, added Molly Anderson, a College of the Atlantic ecologist. “Successful farming is all about making guesses about when you put your crop in, when you harvest, when it’s going to rain, how much rain you’re going get,” she told weather.com in 2013. “A lot of those guesses farmers have been making [for] 10,000 years, suddenly they just don’t hold because we’re entering a new era in which we just don’t know what’s going to be happening with weather.”

What we do know, according to the PNNL research, is that it’s getting hotter faster. Smith wouldn’t say whether we’re past the point of no return or how we as a society need to change, but he did say something has to give. “We’re going to have to adjust to the changes that are coming over the next decade. There’s just too much inertia in the system,” he said. “As we get further out in time, what we do now has more and more of an impact on what the future will be.”

The research was published Monday, Mar. 9, 2015, in the journal Nature Climate Change .

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