In the past year, this little planet in an obscure region of our Milky Way galaxy went through a “state change” that changed things for the first time in the 300,000-year history of humanity.
One theory is that dust concentrations in the Northern Hemisphere's atmosphere, which vary with Atlantic Ocean temperature and pick up fine dirt from northern Africa, are changing the atmosphere's reflectivity and trapping more sun's heat.
Another theory follows the January 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai, which injected so much water vapor (146 million tons) and sulfur dioxide (420,000 tons) into the stratosphere that scientists predicted a year or two of unusual heat signatures worldwide.
Some experts believe it was caused by global laws requiring ships to use cleaner diesel fuel, lowering soot-type particles that formed heat-reflective clouds.
The El Niño ocean pattern is causing heat to rise to the surface and transfer to the atmosphere in unprecedented proportions.
Whatever the cause, something has happened in the past year or so to shift our atmosphere's equilibrium from an older, stable range to a warmer, less stable one.
The anomaly is so spectacular and frightening that scientists, who rarely exaggeration, begin their BioScience article with: “Life on Earth is threatened. We are in unfamiliar territory.
Scientists have warned of catastrophic climatic circumstances due to rising global temperatures driven by human activities that generate greenhouse gases for decades.
Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing those forecasts come true as scary and unprecedented climate records are smashed, causing extreme misery. Our climate problem is a new phenomenon in human history.