The United Nations issued a warning on Wednesday, stating that the period from 2023 to 2027 is highly likely to become the warmest five-year span ever documented.
The rise in greenhouse gas emissions, coupled with the influence of El Nino, is causing temperatures to soar to unprecedented levels.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), there is a 66% probability that at least one of the next five years will surpass the more ambitious temperature target outlined in the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit the impacts of climate change.
The years between 2015 and 2022 already witnessed the hottest temperatures on record, with 2016 being the warmest year among them. However, climate change is projected to further intensify, leading to even higher temperatures in the future.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), there is a 98 percent probability that at least one of the next five years, as well as the entire five-year period, will break the record as the warmest on record.
In the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations committed to limiting global warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with an even more ambitious target of 1.5 degrees Celsius if feasible.
As of 2022, the global mean temperature had already surpassed the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold, standing at 1.15 degrees Celsius above the average measured between 1850 and 1900.
The WMO’s analysis indicates a 66 percent likelihood that annual global surface temperatures will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for at least one year within the 2023-2027 period. The projected temperature range for each of those five years falls between 1.1 degrees Celsius and 1.8 degrees Celsius.
“WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency”, said the agency’s chief Petteri Taalas while talking to foreign news agency.
“A warming El Nino is expected to develop in the coming months and this will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory.
“This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment. We need to be prepared.”
El Nino is the large-scale warming of surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. The weather phenomenon normally occurs every two to seven years.
Typically, El Nino increases global temperatures in the year after it develops – which in this cycle would be 2024.
Wednesday’s predictions show “we haven’t been able to limit the warming so far and we are still moving in the wrong direction”, Taalas told a press conference.
He said it could take until the 2060s to phase out the negative trend and stop things getting worse.
Heat gets trapped in the atmosphere by so-called greenhouse gases, which are at a record high.
The major greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, plus methane and nitrous oxide.
“The return to normal level might take even thousands of years because we already have such a high concentration of carbon dioxide, and we have lost the melting of glaciers and sea level game,” said Taalas.
“There’s no return to the climate which persisted during the last century. That’s a fact.”
