The United Nations weather monitoring agency warns the world is headed for a new temperature record
Latest forecast from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) indicates that there is one 80% chance of that The world will see average annual global temperatures temporarily exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in at least one of the next five years.
“WMO is sounding the alarm that we will temporarily exceed 1.5°C with increasing frequency. We have temporarily exceeded this level each month and indeed on average over the most recent 12-month period,” said WMO Deputy Secretary General Ko Barrett.
However, she emphasized that The provisional breach does not mean the 1.5°C target set in Paris Agreement lost forever because it refers to long-term warming over many decades.
Average global near-surface temperatures each year from 2024 to 2028 are projected to be 1.1°C to 1.9°C higher than the 1850-1900 baseline.
The organization said there is a 47% chance that average global temperatures over the entire five-year period 2024-2028 will exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. WMO Global’s yearly to decade updates, up from 32% compared to last year’s report for the period 2023-2027.
The chance of such a temperature spike – currently at 80% – has increased steadily since 2015, when such a probability was close to zero. In the years 2017 to 2021, there was a 20% chance of exceeding the limit and this number increases to 66% between 2023 and 2027.
Lost my way
“Behind these statistics lies the bleak reality that we are off track to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement,” Ms. Barrett said.
She called on governments to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions because of the increasingly heavy economic costs of trillions of dollars and millions of lives affected by extreme weather. Harsher and serious damage to the environment and biodiversity will have to be paid for in other ways.
Under Paris Agreement, countries agreed to maintain long-term average global surface temperatures below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit this to 1.5° C at the end of this century. The scientific community has repeatedly warned that the warming of more The 1.5°C risk causes much more severe impacts of climate change and extreme weatherand every part of the degree of warming is important.
Devastating impact
Even at current levels of global warming, there are already devastating climatic consequences, such as more heat waves, extreme rainfall and drought, reductions in sea ice, sea ice and glaciers, pushing Rapidly rising sea levels and warming oceans.
For example, according to the WMO report, warming in the Arctic during the next five long winters, from November to March, compared to the 1991-2020 average is predicted to be three times greater. compared to the warming of global average temperature.
Projections for March 2024-2028 show that sea ice concentrations in the Barents Sea, Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk will continue to decrease.
