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This story was first published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The year wasThe 1.5C global limit on global warming is being broken by the world for the first time, according to a new forecast.
Scientists from the UK Met Office discovered that 50% of the five-year limit could be exceeded in the next five years. This was not possible in the five years following 2015, when it was still zero. But it has risen to 2020: 20 percent and 40 percent in 2021. The global average temperature was 1.1C above pre-industrial levels in 2021.
It is also close to certain—93 percent—that by 2026 one year will be the hottest ever recorded, beating 2016, when a natural El Niño climate event supercharged temperatures. It is also near certain that the average temperature of the next five years will be higher than the past five years, as the climate crisis intensifies.
“The 1.5C figure is not some random statistic. It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for peopleAnd indeed the entire planet,” said Prof Petteri Taalas, head of the World Meteorological Organization, which published the new report.
“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise,” said Taalas. “Alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise and our weather will become more extreme.”
Global temperatures can be affected by natural climate cycles. But the Paris Agreement requires nations to hold the underlying rise, driven by human activities, to well below 2C, as well as pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5C. The world’s scientists warned in 2018 that 1.5C global heating will bring severe impacts to billions of people.
“A single year of exceedance above 1.5C does not mean we have breached the iconic threshold of the Paris Agreement, but it does reveal that we are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5C could be exceeded for an extended period,” said Dr Leon Hermanson, at the Met Office.
“The possibility of surpassing the 1.5C threshold, even if only for a year, is worrying,” said Dr Andrew King, at the University of Melbourne. “Our greenhouse gas emissions are still at near-record highs and until we get emissions down to net zero we’re going to continue to see global warming. Rapid and drastic emissions reductions are needed urgently.”
“To actually exceed the [Paris] target we’d have to be above 1.5C even in a ‘normal’ year” unaffected by natural climate variations, said Prof Steven Sherwood at the University of New South Wales. “But the report reminds us that we are getting uncomfortably close to this target.”
The annual forecast reveals the best Climate centers provide prediction systems around the world to produce practical information for decision-makers. It found that there was a higher chance for rain in 2022 than the average over the past 30 years in north Europe, Australia, and the Sahel. However, it is forecast that south-western Europe will experience drier conditions than normal.
Prof Taalas also warned of especially rapid heating at the north pole: “Arctic warming is disproportionately high and what happens in the Arctic affects all of us.” The shrinking of sea ice and its knock-on effects have been linked to extreme weather events in Europe, the North America and Asia, including Heatwaves, floods, and even Snowstorms.
The forecast predicts that there will be an increase in Arctic temperatures will be three times greater than the global average over the next five years.
