There’s a very high chance that one of the next five years will set a new heat record. It’s also very likely that the next five years will see average temperatures above the lower limit in the Paris Agreement on climate change, the UN weather agency forecasts. And the Arctic is warming at more than triple the global average rate.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said Wednesday that this would all fuel more extreme weather.
“Every additional fraction of a degree of warming drives more harmful heatwaves, extreme rainfall events, intense droughts, melting of ice sheets, sea ice, and glaciers, heating of the ocean, and rising sea levels,” it said in a statement.
From this year until the end of 2029, the mean near-surface temperature globally is forecast to be between 1.2 C and 1.9 C higher than pre-industrial levels of the years 1850-1900, the WMO said in a new report.
Scientists warn that this year could end 1.5 C hotter than pre-industrial times, surpassing the current record of 1.48 C set just last year. Some experts now fear Donald Trump’s less-than-friendly stance on climate change could make the crisis even worse.
There is an 80 per cent chance that at least one of the next five years will see record heat, and a 70 per cent likelihood that average warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Last year, the hottest year on record, the WMO reported the first breach of the lower 2015 Paris climate agreement target, which committed countries to “pursue efforts” to limit global warming to 1.5 C, while “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 C above pre-industrial levels.” However, those targets are based on 20-year average temperatures. That means the measured and forecast temperatures do not yet officially breach the lower limit of the Paris Agreement.
What the Arctic and Amazon can expect
In the Arctic, the above-average projected warming will accelerate ice melt in the Arctic and northwest Pacific Ocean.
The WMO report said Arctic warming was predicted to be more than three-and-a-half times the global average, at 2.4 C above the average temperature during the most recent 30-year baseline period over the next five winters.
That’s possible, according to a new study published this week in the journal Nature Communications. An ice-free summer by 2027, they say, is the worst-case scenario — but things can still change if we can limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
Overall global temperatures will remain at or near record levels until the end of the decade, the report said.
Above-average rainfall is forecast in parts of the world, including the Sahel, northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia, for the months between May and September between 2025 and 2029, while drier-than-average conditions are foreseen this season over the Amazon, according to the weather agency.
