Global temperatures are forecast to reach record or near-record levels during the next five years, setting the stage for more deadly extreme weather, according to an annual report from two of the world’s top meteorological agencies.
There is now a 70% chance that global warming over the next five years will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius, Wednesday’s report from the World Meteorological Organization and UK Met Office found.
More than 1.5 degrees of global warming increases the risks of more severe impacts, including triggering tipping points in the climate system. Melting sea ice and glaciers could soon reach a point of no return, with dramatic implications for sea level rise, scientists have warned.
There is an 80% chance that at least one year in the next five will be the warmest on record, the report suggests. It also for the first time raises the possibility, albeit remote, that one of those years will have an average temperature that is at least 2 degrees warmer than the era before humans began burning large amounts of planet-heating fossil fuels.
It’s an outcome with a 1% probability, forecasters said, but that “non-zero” chance is significant, and mirrors how the odds of a 1.5-degree year have climbed during the past decade.
“We have just experienced the ten warmest years on record. Unfortunately, this WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet,” World Meteorological Organization Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett said in a statement.
Global warming of 1.5 degrees would take the world one step further toward breaching the stretch goal of the Paris climate agreement, which many nations — particularly low-lying small island states — view as essential to their survival. The agreement calls for limiting warming to well below the 2-degree level over the long-term, though a single year at that mark would not break the pact’s goal.
Warming in the Arctic is expected to continue to dramatically outpace the rest of the world, with warming of more than 3.5 times the global average during the polar winter, Wednesday’s report states.
Along with melting ice sheets and rising sea levels, each fraction of a degree of warming translates to more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as heat waves and heavy rainfall.
Last year was the hottest on record and marked the first calendar year to breach the Paris agreement’s 1.5-degree limit.
The past five years have featured worsening extremes around the world, from unprecedented heat waves to deadly inland flooding from rapidly intensifying hurricanes like Helene last year.
The WMO and Met Office report includes findings from more than 200 projections from computer models run by 15 scientific institutes around the world. This group’s past five-year forecasts have proven to be highly accurate on a global scale, the report noted, with less accuracy for predictions on more regional levels.
CNN’s Laura Paddison contributed to this report.
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