The temperature increases predicted in the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 1990 seem to be accurate halfway through the forecast period, reports a paper published in Nature Climate Change this week.

In 1990 the first IPCC assessment report was published, forecasting trends in global mean temperature from 1990 to 2030. David Frame and Daithi Stone now highlight that, at the mid-point, the predictions seem to be upheld, even though a number of important external forcings were not included. They conclude that that the IPCC predictions succeeded because greenhouse-gas-induced warming overwhelmed the other forcings over the 20-year timescale.

The authors suggest that the quality of the first consensus climate prediction can be built on with improved knowledge of the climate system, to extended climate predictions to regional scales.