The global average temperature rise will probably reach 1.5°C between 2023 and 2027
Since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, the objective of the international community has been to limit the increase in the global average temperature of the planet by the end of the century to below 1.5 degrees (or at most, two degrees of increase) compared to that at the beginning of the industrial era (1850-1900) to reduce the impact of climate change. An objective that has been moving away as the years have passed without the countries' commitments achieving a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, which have continued to rise.
This Wednesday, a team of scientists warns that not only will those 1.5 degrees be exceeded before the end of the century, but there is a 66% chance that they will be exceeded for the first time between 2023 and 2027, as The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has reported.
According to this body, global temperatures are likely to reach record levels in the next five years, driven by heat-trapping greenhouse gases and the natural phenomenon of El Niño.
And it is that another of the estimates offered is that there is a 98% probability that at least one of the next five years, as well as the five years as a whole, will be the warmest ever recorded.
Likewise, the new study predicts that the average annual temperature for each of the years that comprise the period 2023-2027 will exceed the average temperature between 1850-1900 by between 1.1 and 1.8 degrees..
“These data do not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5°C level expected in the Paris Agreement, which refers to long-term warming over many years.. Even so, the World Meteorological Organization is sounding the alarm that we will exceed the 1.5°C level temporarily and with increasing frequency,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. a press release.
According to scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) linked to the UN, a global warming of 1.5 °C will exacerbate the climate-related risks to which natural and human systems are currently exposed, although logically to a lesser extent than if global warming reaches 2 °C. An increase that cannot be ruled out at all with the countries' current emission reduction commitments.
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The WMO forecast indicates that an El Niño episode will be established in the coming months, which exerts a warming effect. The El Niño phenomenon, added to the effects of climate change caused by human activities, will raise global temperatures to unknown limits, as detailed by Taalas: “This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment. We have to be prepared,” he warns.
In 2015, when the Paris Agreement was signed during the Climate Summit held in the French capital, the probability that at some point in time global warming would exceed pre-industrial levels by 1.5 °C was almost nil, but since then that Probability Has Continued to Increase, According to This New Study. Thus, in the period between 2017 and 2021, the probability of exceeding the indicated threshold was 10%.
1.15 degree increase already recorded
In 2022 – which was the second hottest year in Europe on record and whose summer was the warmest globally – the global average temperature exceeded the average for the period between 1850 and 1900 by about 1.15°C..
According to climate scientists, the cooling effect exerted by La Niña conditions over the past three years temporarily halted the longer-term warming trend. But the La Niña event already ended in March 2023 and, according to forecasts, in the coming months the characteristic conditions of an El Niño episode will be established. Normally, El Niño increases global temperatures in the year following its formation, which in this case would be 2024.
Regarding the prediction of rainfall expected between May and September 2023 (compared to the 1991-2020 average), there is a greater probability that rainfall will be reduced in parts of Indonesia, the Amazon and the Americas, while which are expected to be above average in northern Europe, Alaska, the Sahel, northern Siberia and parts of Australia, according to the new data.
This new study has been published prior to the World Meteorological Congress to be held between May 22 and June 2, a meeting during which an attempt will be made to strengthen weather and climate services to support adaptation to climate change.. Among the measures to be implemented is the so-called 'Early Warnings for All', designed to protect the population from increasingly extreme weather events, as well as a new infrastructure to monitor greenhouse gases.