In 2015, the chance was still almost 0 percent. Now it’s fifty-fifty.

That states the World Meteorological Organization Today. The forecast is based on input from top scientists and the best climate models developed by the world’s leading climate centers.

Rising fast

And all that knowledge, expertise and simulations paint a less than rosy picture. For example, the data show that the chance that the average annual temperature will rise above 1.5 degrees somewhere between 2022 and 2026 is about 48 percent. That chance has increased enormously quickly; in 2015 it was still approaching 0 percent. And the chance that the average global temperature would rise above 1.5 degrees in a given year was estimated at about 10 percent in the period between 2017 and 2021.

Climate target

“The study shows that we are measurably closer to the lower climate target from the Paris climate agreement,” said Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas. He is, of course, referring to the agreement signed by (most) countries worldwide in 2015 in which these countries promised to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and would also try to limit warming even above 1.5 degrees. Celsius to come out. That ambitious climate target, 1.5 degrees, is not an arbitrarily chosen number, Taalas emphasizes. Numerous studies have shown that the moment when the earth is 1.5 degrees warmer than in pre-industrial times, is also the moment when the effects of that warming will increasingly be harmful to people and the planet as a whole.

“As long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise. And with that, our oceans will become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea levels will continue to rise and us will become more extreme again,” Taalas said.

Closer to a lost ambition

Although it is not inconceivable that the average global temperature measured on an annual basis will soon exceed that limit of 1.5 degrees, that does not mean that we can already label Paris’ most ambitious climate target as unachievable, researcher Leon Hermanson emphasizes. leader of the team that performed the probability calculations and associated with the Met Office. “Our latest climate forecasts show that the continued rise in global temperatures will continue and there is even a chance that temperatures will rise 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels in one of the years between 2022 and 2026. However, a single year in which the temperature is 1.5 degrees higher does not mean that we have already broken the iconic limit of the Paris climate agreement, but it does show that we are getting closer to a situation where the temperature remains above that level for longer. exceeds the limit of 1.5 degrees.”

When will the climate target of 1.5 degrees really be out of reach?
When it comes to the temperature of the earth, two things are at play. First, there is the long-term warming trend, which is driven by our greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, there are natural variations in the short term. A good example of this is El Niño; a regularly occurring natural phenomenon in which water in the eastern Pacific Ocean warms strongly and that influences the weather in large parts of the world. Overall, a year in which El Niño makes an appearance is also a year in which the average temperature is higher. We saw that happen in 2016, for example. In that case, there will be some additional warming on top of the man-made warming trend. And in 2016, that led to a record-breaking high average global temperature. The WMO takes such natural variations into account in the update and predicts that there is a 48 percent chance that these, combined with the warming trend, will cause the temperature to be 1.5 degrees higher than in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 or 2026. in pre-industrial times (i.e. the average temperature measured between 1850 and 1900). The climate target of 1.5 degrees, however, only refers to the warming caused by us and does not take natural variation into account. “In other words,” said Professor Steven Sherwood, deputy director of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales and not involved in the study. “To really go beyond the climate target, we need to be above 1.5 degrees of warming even in a ‘normal’ year.” The chance that this will happen between 2022 and 2026 is very unlikely. “But the report does remind us that we are getting closer to that point.”

In their report, the researchers do not only consider the chance that the average global temperature will rise above 1.5 degrees in one of the coming years. They also looked at the chance that we will experience a record-breaking warm year between 2022 and 2026. The chance that the current record holder (the exceptionally warm year 2016, partly thanks to El Niño) will be dethroned in the next five years, turns out to be 93(!) percent. In addition, there is also a very high chance (93 percent) that the average temperature recorded in the period 2022-2026 will be higher than the average temperature in the five years before (2017-2021).

They are sobering prophecies that we can only hope will spur humanity into action. Because that 1.5 degrees that seemed like a far-from-my-bed show in 2015 may soon be making an appearance for the first time and with that it is only a matter of time before that 1.5 degrees of warming becomes the new normal. Unless we intervene quickly and hard. The latter is something countries had already decided to do in 2015, but which has not come to much until now; after greenhouse gas emissions fell slightly during the pandemic, they are now on the rise again.