Tenth consecutive monthly heat record alarms and confounds climate scientists

全球气温连续十个月破纪录！科学家：厄尔尼诺事件没结束还是地球气候加速恶化？

Another month, another global heat record that has left climate scientists scratching their heads and hoping this is an El Ni?o-related hangover rather than a symptom of worse-than-expected planetary health.

过去的一个月再次刷新了全球高温纪录。高温不退的现象让气候科学家感到迷惑不解，他们更希望这是厄尔尼诺事件的余波，而不是地球健康状况比预期更糟的征兆。

Global surface temperatures in March were 0.1C higher than the previous record for the month, set in 2016, and 1.68C higher than the pre-industrial average, according to data released on Tuesday by the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

哥白尼气候变化服务局4月9日发布的数据显示，三月份全球地表温度比2016年创下的同月最高纪录高出0.1摄氏度，比工业化前平均水平高出1.68摄氏度。

This is the 10th consecutive monthly record in a warming phase that has shattered all previous records. Over the past 12 months, average global temperatures have been 1.58C above pre-industrial levels.

这是全球地表温度连续第十个月打破纪录。在过去的12个月，气候持续变暖，全球平均温度比工业化前水平高出了1.58摄氏度。

However the sharp increase in temperatures over the past year has surprised many scientists, and prompted concerns about a possible acceleration of heating.

过去一年气温的急剧上升让许多科学家感到惊讶，引发了科学家对于全球变暖加速的担忧。

Diana ?rge-Vorsatz, one of the vice-chairs of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), noted the planet has been warming at a pace of 0.3C per decade over the past 15 years, almost double the 0.18C per decade trend since the 1970s. “Is this within the range of climate variability or signal of accelerated warming? My concern is it might be too late if we just wait to see,” she tweeted.

联合国政府间气候变化专门委员会副主席戴安娜·尤尔格·沃萨茨指出，过去15年间，地球以每十年升高0.3摄氏度的速度在变暖，相比上世纪70年代之后每十年升高0.18摄氏度的变暖趋势几乎翻番。她在推特（X网站）上写道：“这是正常范围内的气候变化还是全球变暖加速的信号？我担心如果我们只是观望而不采取行动，到时候恐怕就来不及了。”

Gavin Schmidt, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, noted that temperature records are being broken each month by up to 0.2C.

美国宇航局戈达德空间研究所所长加文·施密特指出，每月地表温度水平最高比先前纪录超出了0.2摄氏度。

Schmidt listed several plausible causes of the anomaly – the El Ni?o effect, reductions in cooling sulphur dioxide particles due to pollution controls, fallout from the January 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption in Tonga, and the ramping up of solar activity in the run-up to a predicted solar maximum.

施密特列举出了几个可能导致气候反常的原因：厄尔尼诺效应、对空气起到冷却作用的二氧化硫因污染防控而减少、2022年1月汤加火山喷发喷出的火山灰和温室气体、太阳活动高峰期到来前太阳活动的增加。

But based on preliminary analyses, he said these factors were not sufficient to account for the 0.2C increase: “If the anomaly does not stabilise by August – a reasonable expectation based on previous El Ni?o events – then the world will be in uncharted territory. It could imply that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated.”

但是，施密特表示，基于初步分析发现，这些因素不足以导致0.2摄氏度的升温。他说：“如果异常升温现象到今年8月还在继续（8月前的升温还可看作是上一次厄尔尼诺事件的余波），那么地球的前路将无法预知。这可能暗示着全球变暖已经从根本上改变了气候系统的运行方式，这一改变来得远比科学家预期的要早得多。”

The core of the problem – fossil fuel emissions – is well known and largely uncontested in the scientific community. A survey of nearly 90,000 climate-related studies shows a 99.9% consensus that humans are altering the climate by burning gas, oil, coal and trees.

全球变暖问题的核心——化石燃料排放——是众所周知的，而且在科学界也基本没有争议。一项对近9万项气候相关研究的调查显示，99.9%的研究一致认为人类燃烧天然气、石油、煤炭和木材的行为导致了气候变化。

"Stopping further warming requires rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” said Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

哥白尼气候变化服务局副局长萨曼莎·伯吉斯表示：“阻止全球进一步变暖需要快速减少温室气体排放量。”

Michael E Mann, the scientist whose 1999 “hockey-stick graph” showed the sharp rise in global temperatures since the industrial age, said the current trends were to be expected given the continuing rise in emissions. But he said that should not be a source of comfort. “The world is warming AS FAST as we predicted – and that’s bad enough,” he tweeted.

曾在1999年绘制出全球气温自工业时代以来急剧上升的“曲棍球曲线图”的迈克尔·E·曼表示，鉴于温室气体排放量的持续上升，当前的趋势是可以被预见到的。但是他认为，这不能成为人类麻醉自己的理由。他在推特（X网站）上写道：“地球正以我们预测的速度在变暖，这已经够糟了。”

英文来源：卫报

翻译&编辑：丹妮

审校：董静、齐磊

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