A family walks across the dry, cracked earth that used to be the bottom of Lake Mendocino on April 22, 2021 in Ukiah, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
According to a study by climatologists, the likelihood of the planet reaching an important temperature limit has doubled in the next five years. The world is well on its way to experiencing the hottest year on record in the same period.
“There’s a roughly 40% chance that the average annual global temperature will temporarily be 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels for at least one of the next five years – and those chances will increase over time.” The World Meteorological Organization said Thursday. WMO, a specialized agency of the United Nations, said this had doubled from 20% in the past decade.
The lower goal of the groundbreaking Paris Agreement of 2015 is that 1.5 degrees Celsius are above the pre-industrial level. The climate agreement is generally recognized as extremely important in order to avoid an irreversible climate crisis.
In 2020 – one of the three hottest years in history – the global average temperature was 1.2 ° C above the pre-industrial baseline, the WMO reported in April. The Paris Agreement aims to keep the rise in global temperature this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
“There is a 90% chance that between 2021 and 2025 at least one year will be the warmest in history,” said the WMO in its press release.
By 2025, regions with high latitudes such as Europe, the northern United States and Canada, and Russia and the Sahel in Africa are likely to become more humid, and the Atlantic is likely to experience more tropical cyclones compared to the recent past, as the WMO defines the 1981-2010 average.
“These are more than just statistics,” said WMO General Secretary Petteri Taalas in a statement.
“Rising temperatures mean more melting ice, higher sea levels, more heat waves and other extreme weather, and greater impacts on food security, health, the environment and sustainable development,” he said.
Still, the WMO says that there is a “very unlikely” probability of only 10% that the planet’s average five-year temperature will be 1.5 ° C warmer than pre-industrial levels for all of 2021-2025. The 90% probability relates to this temperature rise in one of the next five years.
Met Office lead scientist Leon Hermanson told BBC News on Thursday: “We’re approaching 1.5 ° C – we’re not there yet, but we’re approaching. The time for the strong action we need now, expires . “
Worse extreme catastrophic events
Governments around the world have set ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions, and large energy companies are now beginning to feel the effects of the climate movement as some heavyweight investors pressurize companies to cut their fossil fuel consumption.
However, cutting emissions significantly will be an extremely challenging task, scientists warn. The WMO notes that the “nationally determined contributions” of the Paris Agreement or the commitments of the states to reduce emissions “are currently well below what is necessary to achieve this target”.
And energy needs are expected to increase dramatically in the coming years as the world population continues to grow, with most of that need still to be met by fossil fuels, according to the Energy Information Administration.
The COP26 summit, slated for November this year in Glasgow, Scotland, is described by many scholars and policymakers as a crucial “make or break” moment for governments to curb what many pre-emerge sea levels and warn globally temperatures are rising.
In the United States alone, the intensification of rainfall caused by climate change over the past thirty years has caused nearly $ 75 billion in flood damage, Stanford University researchers found in a study published in January. These researchers warned that the warming enshrined in the Paris Global Climate Agreement will exacerbate the extreme catastrophic events.
And developing countries are most exposed to climate risk – especially in coastal areas and in countries that are highly dependent on predictable weather patterns for agricultural production.
Morgan Stanley reported in 2019 that climate-related disasters have cost the world $ 650 billion in the past three years, with North America bearing most of the burden.
