Geneva: The United Nations warned on Wednesday that there is a 70% chance that average heating from 2025 to 2029 will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius International Benchmark.
The planet is therefore expected to remain at historical warming levels after the two hottest years ever registered in 2023 and 2024, according to an annual climate report published by the World Meteorological Organization, the UN’s weather and climate agency.
“We’ve just experienced the 10 hottest years on the record,” said WMO’s Deputy Secretary Secretary Ko Barrett.
“Unfortunately, this WMO report will give no signs of respite in the coming years, which means there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet.”
The Paris climate in 2015 aimed to limit global warming to well below 2 ° C above the pre-industrial levels and to 1.5 ° C if possible.
The targets are calculated according to the average 1850-1900 before humanity began industrial burning coal, oil and gas that emits carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gas, which is largely responsible for climate change.
The more optimistic target of 1.5 ° C is that the growing number of climate scientists now consider impossible to achieve as CO2 emissions are still increasing.
Five-year prospects
WMO’s latest projections are compiled by the UK’s Met Office National Weather Service, based on forecasts from several global centers.
The Agency foresees that the global average close surface temperature for each year between 2025 and 2029 will be between 1.2 ° C and 1.9 ° C above the pre -industrial average.
It says there is a 70% chance that average heating in the period 2025-2029 will exceed 1.5 ° C.
“This is fully in line with our proximity to passing 1.5 ° C on a long -term basis in the late 2020s or early 2030s,” said Peter Thorne, director of Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units Group at the University of Maynooth.
“I would expect for two to three years that this probability is 100%” in the five -year prospects, he added.
WMO says there is an 80% chance that at least one year between 2025 and 2029 will be warmer than the hottest year on the record (2024).
Long -term outlook
To smooth out natural climate variations, several methods evaluate long -term warming, WMO’s director of climate services Christopher Hewitt told a press conference.
An approach combines observations from the last 10 years with projections in the next decade.
This predicts that the 20-year-old average heating for 2015-2034 will be 1.44 ° C.
There is no consensus yet on how to best assess long -term heating.
EU climate climate copernicus expects the heating to be 1.39 ° C at the moment, and projects 1.5 ° C could be reached by mid -2029 or before.
2 ° C warming now on the radar
Although “unusually unlikely” at 1%, there is now a chance above zero in at least one year in the next five over 2 ° C warming.
“This is the first time we’ve ever seen such an event in our computer prospects,” said Met Office’s Adam Scaife.
“It’s shocking,” and “that probability will rise”.
He recalled that a decade ago, the forecasts first showed the very low probability of a calendar year that exceeded 1.5 ° C -Benchmark. But it happened in 2024.
‘Dangerous’ heating level
Each fraction of a degree of further heating can intensify heat waves, extreme rainfall, drought and melting of ice caps, sea ice and glaciers.
This year’s climate offers no respite.
Last week, China recorded temperatures above 40 ° C (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas, the United Arab Emirates nearly 52 ° C (126f), and Pakistan was hit by deadly winds after an intense heat wave.
“We have already hit a dangerous heating level,” with recent “deadly floods in Australia, France, Algeria, India, China and Ghana, Fire Brands in Canada,” said climatologist Friederike Otto of Imperial College London.
“To rely on oil, gas and coal in 2025 is total lunacy.”
Other warnings
Arctic warming is expected to continue to surpass the global average in the next five years, WMO said.
Predictions for Havis for March 2025-2029 suggest further reductions in Barents Sea, Bering Sea and the sea in Okhotsk.
Forecasts suggest that South Asia will be wetter than average in the next five years.
And rainfall patterns suggest wetter than average conditions in Sahel, Northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia and drier than average conditions over the Amazon.
