FALSE: The rate of global warming from 1899 to 1940 was not faster than from 1983 to 2024
A claim that past increases in temperature were faster than the current rate is FALSE.
A website claimed that a new paper proves that warming from 1899-1944 happened at a faster rate than the current epoch, 1983-2024. It claims the finding is based on a research paper.
The paper exists but has significant shortcomings. It was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, appears only as a working paper in a university repository, and was written by a single author who is not a climate scientist.
It concludes that humans are not responsible for global warming, a claim that contradicts the overwhelming consensus of peer-reviewed climate research. PesaCheck has previously established that human activity drives climate change.
But is it true that warming now is slower than in the past?
According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), temperatures are rising faster than at any time in thousands of years.
"Global surface temperature in the first two decades of the 21st century (2001–2020) was 0.99°C higher than 1850–1900. Global surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50-year period over at least the last 2000 years," their report found.
A study in Nature warned that the "rate and magnitude of modern warming" is unprecedented in the last 24,000 years. It is also hotter now than in the last 125,000 years, according to an analysis of the IPCC's findings.
The last three years (2023-2025) were the hottest ever recorded, with the last 11 years being the warmest recorded in the instrumental period. Warming has skyrocketed from the 1960s onward, reaching today's unprecedented rate.
(Credit: Berkley Earth)
The European Union Copernicus programme found an upshot in warming from the late 1970s onward. "[Warming] accelerates from 0.18°C per decade at the mid-point of the 30 years 1979–2008 to 0.25°C per decade at the end of 2025," their 2025 climate report found.
(Credit: Copernicus)
Other reports have also concurred that the rate of human-induced global warming is now at an all-time high.
A study by 60 researchers all over the world warned that the energy imbalance of the planet (the difference between the heat the Earth absorbs versus what it emits) has more than doubled since 1975.
A paper published in Science found that if the current rates of warming persist and greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, the Earth could reach temperatures unheard of in millions of years.
Given all this dire data, current warming is the fastest recorded, and much more rapid than observed from 1899-1940.
PesaCheck has examined a claim that past temperature increases outstrip current levels and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here's more information on PesaCheck's methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck climate change fact-checker Christiaan van der Merwe and edited by PesaCheck chief copy editor Stephen Ndegwa.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck’s managing editor Doreen Wainainah.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent's largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.