A World Meteorological Organization report released Wednesday predicts there’s a small chance that the average global temperature will exceed 2°C of warming above the preindustrial average in at least one of the next five years—an occurrence that one expert said would be “completely unprecedented.”
“That was effectively impossible a few years ago,” Adam Scaife, a researcher at the U.K. Met Office, said during a media briefing. Over the long term, 2°C of warming is associated with more frequent and deadly heatwaves, destructive extreme weather, more rapid sea-level rise, and accelerated biodiversity loss.
While the WMO report puts the chance of breaching the 2°C threshold before 2030 at just 1%, Scaife stressed that “the probability will increase as the climate warms.”
“It is shocking that 2°C is plausible,” said Scaife.
“We have just experienced the ten warmest years on record. This WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years.”
The WMO, Met Office, and other organizations behind the report said there’s an 80% chance that at least one of the next five years will surpass 2024 as the hottest on record, as the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels worldwide relentlessly warm the planet.
The report suggests it’s even more probable—86%—that the average global temperature in at least one of the next five years will breach the critical 1.5°C warming threshold set by the Paris climate accord. Last year was the first in which the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level.
Arctic warming is expected “to be more than three and a half times the global average,” WMO said, portending further loss of sea ice.
“We have just experienced the ten warmest years on record,” WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett said in a statement. “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.”
The report is the latest piece of evidence that the international community is badly failing to constrain runaway planetary heating, which is wreaking havoc globally in the form of increasingly extreme weather, severe public health impacts, and more.
In the U.S.—the world’s top economy and largest historical contributor to planet-warming emissions—oil and gas production surged to a record high last year, and President Donald Trump is doing everything in his power to further boost fossil fuels while shredding green-energy initiatives and withdrawing from global efforts to combat the climate crisis.
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