Annual global climate update to decadent also revealed 93% chance of at least a year between 2022 and 2026 being the warmest on record, thus knocking 2016 off the top spot.
The 5-year average chance for this period is higher than the last 5 years, 2017-2021, which is also 93%.
The 1.5°C target is the target of Paris Agreementwhich calls on countries to take joint climate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit global warming.
Probability increase
“This study shows that – with a high level of science – we are getting closer to temporarily achieving the lower goal of Paris Agreement on Climate Change,” said Peter Taalas, WMO General secretary.
“The 1.5°C figure is not a random statistic,” he added, but “an indicator of when climate impacts will become increasingly harmful to humans and really the entire planet.”
The chance of temporarily exceeding the 1.5°C threshold has steadily increasing since 2015according to a report made by the UK Met Office, the WMO’s lead center for up-to-date climate projections.
At the time, it was close to zero, but the probability has increased to 10% over the past 5 years and to almost 50% between 2022-2026.
Massive impact
Mr. Taalas warned that As long as countries continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise.
“And with that, our oceans will continue to get warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea levels will continue to rise, and our weather will continue to grow. become more severe. Warming in the Arctic is disproportionately high and what happens in the Arctic affects us all,” he said.
The Paris Agreement outlines long-term goals guiding governments towards limiting global temperature rise to below 2°C, while pursuing efforts to limit further increases to 1.5°C. °C.
© Unsplash / Patrick Perkins
Wildfires raging across parts of the American West have turned the sky of San Francisco orange.
‘Edges Closer Than Ever’
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also states that climate-related risks to global warming are 1.5°C higher than they are today, but lower at 2 °C.
Dr Leon Hermanson of the UK Met Office said: “Our latest climate projections suggest that global temperatures will continue to rise, potentially even one of the years from 2022 to 2026 will be 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” who cited the report.
“One year of excesses above 1.5°C does not mean we have breached the iconic threshold of the Paris Agreement, but it does show that we are getting closer to a situation where it could exceed 1°C. ,5°C for a long time.”
Last year, the average global temperature was 1.1°C above the pre-industrial baseline, according to WMO’s interim report on the State of the Global Climate. The final report for 2021 will be published on May 18.
WMO says consecutive La Niña events in early and late 2021 have the effect of reducing global temperatures. However, this is only temporary and does not reverse the long-term global warming trend.
Any development of an El Niño event will immediately boost temperatures, as happened in 2016, the warmest year on record, the agency said.
