Parts of Northern Europe have experienced unseasonably warm spring weather this week. A new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) suggests this could soon become the norm.
This report, prepared by the WMO and the UK Met Office, forecasts global temperatures for the next five years.
New United Nations climate projections now predict a high probability of accelerated warming until 2030 , with the Earth breaking its record for the hottest year on record and regularly exceeding the international climate boundary set in 2015.
According to scientists, global warming leads to more extreme weather events, including floods, droughts and heat waves like the one Europe experienced this week.
There is a 91% chance that at least one of the next five years will exceed the 1.5°C threshold and an 86% chance that one of these years will break the record for the hottest year ever recorded on Earth, set in 2024, the WMO report indicates.
The WMO predicts that each year until 2030 will be between 1.3°C and 1.9°C above the averages recorded since the end of the 19th century.
"Over the next five years, we expect temperatures to be above average virtually everywhere in the world, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere and over land. There is a very high probability that at least one of the next five years will exceed 1.5°C; the probability is 91%. There is also a 91% chance that the next five years will be warmer than the previous five years; the scientific data is therefore very clear. The climate is warming and global average temperatures continue to rise; it is very clear that we need to take urgent action to mitigate this as much as possible," says Melissa Seabrook, one of the report's authors and a climate scientist at the UK Met Office.
Just look at what's happening in Europe, where unprecedented heat records were broken in May ," she explains. "In a warmer world, we expect to see these exceptional weather events occur more and more frequently."
She adds that it is becoming clear that the Paris climate agreement is unlikely to hold.
"It is increasingly likely that we will not be able to stay below this threshold, and extreme mitigation measures would be needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C. But it is important to note that this is not a kind of threshold: these temperatures are not going to suddenly stop, nothing is going to tip into the void when we reach 1.5°C, but each increase of 0.1°C has increasingly serious impacts. And it is important to keep in mind that this is not a precipice. But it is very important to try to limit our warming as much as possible ," she explains.
And if the average of the next five years exceeds 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era, this means that the Earth will have warmed by a quarter of a degree Celsius in a decade, which is faster than the warming rates of about two tenths of a degree Celsius per decade recorded before 2022.
The next five winters in the Arctic are predicted to be 5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.8 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1991-2020 average, and Arctic sea ice is likely to continue melting.
"The Arctic, in particular, is warming at a much higher rate than the rest of the world. It is therefore warming about 3.5 times faster than the rest of the globe ," explains the climatologist.
She adds that this is a process called Arctic amplification : "Basically, as sea ice and snow melt in the Arctic, we lose this mirroring effect, because the snow and sea ice used to reflect solar radiation back into space. And as they melt, we kind of lose that effect. So we absorb more solar radiation, which means temperatures rise at a much faster rate, creating a kind of positive feedback loop. As the temperature rises, more sea ice melts. This makes things worse, so yes, this is Arctic amplification."
The projections also predict a dangerous drought accompanied by risks of forest fires in the Amazon, which represents a crucial part of Earth's natural defenses against human-caused climate change.
If the WMO projections materialize, the Sahel region of Africa could experience flooding.
The Sahel is described by the United Nations Development Programme as a 5,000-kilometer strip of land located south of the Sahara Desert, extending from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Red Sea.
The climatologist explains: "Yes, the Sahel is a particularly interesting region because it has been affected by very severe droughts over the past 30 years. Wetter than average conditions in the Sahel could therefore potentially mean that there will be fewer droughts in this region. This could therefore result in a better growing season, but it could also increase the risk of flooding in this region which is not used to receiving a lot of rainfall."
The report is based on the average of approximately 200 computer simulations using 13 different climate models from various countries, Melissa Seabrook explained.
