Greenhouse gas emissions combined with an El Nino weather event could push global temperatures to record levels in the next five years, with a "good chance" that the average annual temperature will exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year during the period, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said today.
The WMO said there is a 66pc likelihood that the annual average near-surface global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels — the most ambitious temperature goal of the Paris climate agreement — for at least one year. "WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency," secretary-general Petteri Taalas said. According to the WMO, there is a 98pc chance that one of the next five years, and 2023-2027 as a whole, will exceed 2016 levels, which was an El Nino year and the warmest on record.
The global average temperature in 2022 was 1.15°C above the average for 1850-1900 and the years 2015-22 were the eight warmest since records began in 1850, according to the WMO. Temperatures rose last year despite the "cooling influence" of the La Nina weather event in the past three years. La Nina ended in March and an El Nino weather event is expected in the coming months, with temperatures typically increasing a year after it develops.
El Nino combined with "human-induced climate change" will push global temperatures into "uncharted territory", Taalas said. Warmer temperatures will have "far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment", he said.
The WMO sees an increased chance of reduced rainfall in parts of Indonesia, the Amazon region and central America in 2023. "Higher temperatures are bad news for agriculture, for water resources and for human wellbeing", he said, adding that it also enhances the risk of forest fires, including in the Amazon.
Even taking away variable temperature events such as La Nina and El Nino, the WMO report shows the world is moving in the wrong direction temperature-wise "as we have not been able to limit the warming so far", Taalas said.
Under the UN's 2015 Paris climate agreement, countries aim to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and preferably to 1.5°C. But the UN found last year that under current national climate pledges, the world is on course to reach 2.5°C of warming by the end of the century.
Taalas noted that there will be "no return back to good old days" to temperature levels from the last century. "The best we can do is to phase out these negative trends in weather patterns — heatwaves, flooding, droughts, tropical storms — by being ambitious and successful in climate mitigation", including stopping deforestation and reducing fossil fuels consumption, he said. He added that a return to "normal levels" could take a thousand years because of the high concentration of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere.
