Our key takeaway: One of the next five years might be the first to cross the 1.5ºC threshold, but it probably won’t be the last. As Prof. Taalas, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), reminds us “the 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic. It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet.” The prediction that this is now 48% likely is part of the WMO’s annual climate report published this week, which gathers climate data from the best climate experts around the globe. This year’s report also warns us about the average degree of warming we should expect during the next 5 years will be between 1.1°C and 1.7°C above preindustrial levels, and that one of these years will also replace 2016 as the warmest year on record.
The UK’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has published its “Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update” (May 2022), summarized in a recent press release. The update “provides a synthesis of the global annual to decadal predictions produced by the WMO designated Global Producing Centres and other contributing centres” for the period of 2022- 2026, and “harnesses the expertise of internationally acclaimed climate scientists and the best prediction systems from leading climate centres around the world.” The predictions in the report cover the expected average temperatures for the next five years, the expected changes in precipitation, the rises in sea level around the world for the same timeframe, and the prediction it is now 48% likely that one of the next years will be 1.5°C warmer than preindustrial levels.
- Temporarily crossing the 1.5ºC threshold is now likely. The report concludes that there’s a 48% chance that one of the next 5 years will have an average temperature that is 1.5°C higher than preindustrial levels. This “chance of temporarily exceeding 1.5°C has risen steadily since 2015, when it was close to zero,” the scientist explains. And, while a temporary increase in temperature above the 1.5°C does not mean that we will breach the 1ºC target of the Paris Agreement, which refers to a long-term goal, “it does reveal that we are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5°C could be exceeded for an extended period”, the lead author of the report Dr Leon Hermanson explained. Furthermore, “temporary exceedances are expected to occur with increasing frequency as global temperatures approach the long-term threshold,” the report indicates. However, it also concludes that it is unlikely (10% chance) that the average temperature for the next five years (2022 – 2026) will exceed the 1.5°C mark.
- 2022 – 2026 will be warmer than previous years and include the warmest year ever in record. The WMO report indicates that the next five years will be warmer than the last and that they will each have an annual average temperature “between 1.1°C and 1.7°C higher than preindustrial levels.” One of these five years is also expected to be the warmest in record with a 93% likelihood, making it warmer than the currently recorded warmest year that is 2016. Warming will be especially high in the Artic, where the “temperature anomaly, compared to the 1991-2020 average, is predicted to be more than three times as large as the global mean anomaly when averaged over the next five northern hemisphere extended winters.” What this means, according to the WMO Secretary General Prof. Petteri Taalas, is that “Arctic warming is disproportionately high and what happens in the Arctic affects all of us.”
- 2022 will keep getting warmer. Finally, average temperatures for 2022 are likely to be higher than those of the previous two decades for “almost all regions except parts of the Southern Ocean, South Atlantic, and Pacific Ocea.” Alaska, western Canada, and India are likely to have cooler temperatures than the past decades for the rest of this year. Yet, “as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise. And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise and our weather will become more extreme” (Prof. Petteri Taalas).
