By Seth Borenstein
Associated Press
The world is inching closer to the warming threshold that international agreements are trying to avoid, and there is a nearly 50% chance that the Earth will temporarily reach that temperature mark within the next five years, a team of meteorologists forecast on Monday. of all the world.
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The human-induced climate emergency continues, and there is a 48% chance that the world will reach an annual average of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels of the late 19th century at least once before. of 2026, a strong alarm signal for science and negotiations on the climate emergency, according to the forecast presented by a team of 11 different meteorological centers for the World Meteorological Organization.
The possibilities are increasing along with the thermometer.
Last year, these same teams put the odds closer to 40%, up from just 10% a decade ago.
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In its general forecast for the next five years, the team coordinated by the British Meteorological Office pointed out that there is a 93% chance that the planet will set a new record for the hottest year by the end of 2026.
He also pointed out that there is a 93% chance that the five-year period between 2022 and 2026
will be the hottest on record.
In addition, he forecasts that the devastating fire-promoting drought in the southwestern United States will continue.
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“We are going to see continued warming in line with what is expected with the climate emergency,” said Leon Hermanson, a scientist at Britain's Bureau of Meteorology and coordinator of the report.
These forecasts are an overview of global and regional climate predictions on an annual and seasonal scale based on long-term averages and state-of-the-art computer simulations.
They are different from the increasingly accurate weather forecasts that indicate how dry or humid a certain day will be in specific places.
A man and a boy walk through the almost dry bed of the Yamuna River after a heat wave, Monday, May 2, 2022, in New Delhi. Manish Swarup / AP
But even if the world reaches the 1.5-degree mark above pre-industrial times — the planet has already warmed about 1.1 degrees (2 Fahrenheit) since the late 19th century — it's not the same as the global threshold set by scientists. international negotiators in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
In 2018, an important scientific report from the United Nations predicted drastic and dangerous effects for the population and for the world in the event that warming exceeds 1.5 degrees.
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The 1.5-degree threshold doesn't mean the planet gets that hot for one year, but over a period of 20 or 30 years, several scientists said.
This is not what the report forecasts.
Meteorologists can only tell if Earth hits that average mark a few years — maybe a decade or two — after it has actually hit it at least once, because that's a long-term average, Hermanson said.
"This is a warning of what the average is going to be in a few years
," said climatologist Natalie Mahowald of Cornell University, who was not involved with the forecast teams.