Geneva: The United Nations warned Wednesday that there is 70% chance that the average warming from 2025 to 2029 exceeds the international reference index of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The planet should therefore remain at the historical levels of warming after the two hottest years ever recorded in 2023 and 2024, according to an annual climate report published by the World Meteorological Organization, the UN weather and climate agency.
“We have just experienced the hottest 10 years ever recorded,” said OMM deputy secretary general Ko Barrett.
“Unfortunately, this WMO report does not provide any sign of respite in the coming years, which means that there will be an increasing negative impact on our economies, our daily life, our ecosystems and our planet.”
The 2015 Paris climate aimed to limit global warming to much less than 2 ° C above pre-industrial levels-and 1.5 ° C if possible.
The targets are calculated compared to the average of 1850-1900, before humanity begins to burn coal, oil and industrially gas, which emits carbon dioxide (CO2) – greenhouse gas largely responsible for climate change.
The more optimistic target of 1.5 ° C is that that the growing number of climatologists now consider impossible to reach, because CO2 emissions are still increasing.
Five -year prospects
The latest WMO projections are compiled by the British National Service Office, based on forecasts for several world centers.
The agency provides that the global average temperature close to the surface for each year between 2025 and 2029 will be between 1.2 ° C and 1.9 ° C above the pre-industrial average.
It indicates that there is 70% chance that average warming over the period 2025-2029 exceeds 1.5 ° C.
“This is entirely consistent with our proximity to spend 1.5 ° C in the long term at the end of the 2020s or early 2030s,” said Peter Thorne, director of the Irish analysis group and climate research units of the University of Maynooth.
“I would expect that in two to three years of this probability of being 100%” in the five-year prospects, he added.
The WMO says that there is 80% chance that at least a year between 2025 and 2029 is warmer than the hottest year ever recorded (2024).
Longer -term perspectives
To smooth natural climatic variations, several methods assess the long -term warming, said the director of OMM climate services, Christopher Hewitt, a press conference.
An approach combines observations from the last 10 years with projections for the next decade.
This predicts that average warming at 20 years for 2015-2034 will be 1.44 ° C.
There is not yet a consensus on the best way to assess global warming.
The EU Copernic climate monitor estimates that global warming is currently at 1.39 ° C, and 1.5 ° C projects could be achieved in mid-2029 or earlier.
2 ° C warming now on the radar
Although “exceptionally improbable” at 1%, there is now a risk greater than zero from at least a year in the next five outbursts of 2 ° C of warming.
“This is the first time that we have seen such an event in our computer predictions,” said Adam Scaife of the Met Office.
“It’s shocking” and “this probability will increase”.
He recalled that a decade ago, forecasts first showed the very low probability of a calendar year exceeding the reference of 1.5 ° C. But this happened in 2024.
“Dangerous” warming level
Each fraction of an additional degree of warming can intensify thermal waves, extreme precipitation, droughts and the fusion of glacial caps, sea ice and glaciers.
This year’s climate has no respite.
Last week, China recorded temperatures above 40 ° C (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in certain regions, the United Arab Emirates nearly 52 ° C (126F), and Pakistan was struck by fatal winds after an intense heat wave.
“We have already reached a level of dangerous warming”, with “recent fatal floods in Australia, France, Algeria, India, China and Ghana, forest fires in Canada,” said the climatologist Friederike Otto of Imperial College London.
“Based on oil, gas and coal in 2025 is total madness.”
Other warnings
The warming of the Arctic should continue to exceed the world average over the next five years, WMO said.
The predictions of sea ice for March 2025-2029 suggest additional discounts of the Barent Sea, the sea of Bering and the sea of Okhotsk.
Forecasts suggest that southern Asia will be more humid than average over the next five years.
And the precipitation patterns suggest more humid conditions than the average of the Sahel, northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia, and drier than the average conditions on the Amazon.
