The World Meteorological Organization has predicted that global temperatures will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time in human history during the next five years, according to the Financial Times.
And the newspaper reported, Wednesday, that scientists said, in a shocking conclusion, that there is a 66 percent chance that the annual average global surface temperature rise will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in “at least” one year by 2027.
The probability of achieving this outcome is “increasing with time,” the report said, as the probability of a temporary breach of the 1.5°C threshold rose to 66 percent from about 48 percent a year earlier, and to “close to zero” in 2015.
The report, compiled by researchers from 11 organizations around the world, including those in Europe, North America, Japan and China, covers the years 2023 to 2027.
The authors told the paper that there is a 98 percent chance that one of the five years will surpass the record temperature rise of 1.28 degrees Celsius in 2016, and that the next half-decade as a whole will be the warmest on record.
They added that this is the first time in human history that we have come this close.
It is likely, according to the newspaper, that the expected return of the El Niño weather phenomenon, which involves a warming of the Pacific Ocean surface, by the end of this year, will lead to an amplification of global temperatures.
And temperatures in the Arctic are also expected to rise three times faster than the global average, because melting ice reduces the ability to reflect the sun and causes more warming than anywhere else.
And the United Nations warned in a report that the warmth brought by the El Niño phenomenon, along with human-induced climate change, would push global temperatures into the unknown. She explained that this will have far-reaching implications for health, food security, water management and the environment.
According to the United Nations website, the effect of the La Niña phenomenon over most of the past three years temporarily curbed the long-term warming trend, but this phenomenon ended last March. Despite this, the average global temperature in 2022 was about 1.15 degrees above pre-industrial rates.
The site stated that the El Niño phenomenon usually leads to an increase in global temperatures in the year following its development, and therefore the World Meteorological Organization expects its effects to appear in 2024.
