article_snippet: The world needs to prepare The world for a rapid increase in the speed of climate change, scientists have warned.
article_snippet: US researchers claim that the fast onset of global warming is set to alter the way people live, even over short time scales.
article_snippet: The Arctic (purple) will be have the most dramatic increase, followed by North America (brown), Europe (black) and Asia (red)
article_snippet: The analysis, based on a combination of data from more than two dozen climate simulation models from around the world, looked at the rate of change in 40-year long time spans. '
article_snippet: Overall, the world is getting warmer due to increasing greenhouse gas emissions that trap the sun's heat.
article_snippet: But, given natural climate variability over short times scales, the likely effect of global warming over humanly relevant periods such as the length of a person's life is not so well understood. '
article_snippet: The graph shows the predicted changes under different scenarios of climate change .
article_snippet: This was compared with temperature data for the past 2,000 years obtained by studying tree rings, corals and ice cores and predicted 40-year rates of change between 1971 and 2020.
article_snippet: Different scenarios of future emissions showed that even at the lower end of greenhouse gas generation climate change picked up speed in the next 40 years.
article_snippet: Dr Smith added: 'In these climate model simulations, the world is just now starting to enter into a new place, where rates of temperature change are consistently larger than historical values over 40-year time spans. '
article_snippet: We need to better understand what the effects of this will be and how to prepare for a new place, where rates of temperature change are consistently larger than historical values over 40-year time spans.'
article_snippet: The findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.