Global temperature likely to breach 1.5°C in next five years: WMO

Business Standard

2 days ago

A new report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Wednesday warned that there is a 70 per cent chance of global temperatures exceeding the 1.5°C threshold above pre-industrial levels between 2025 and 2029.
The warning comes at a time when 180 of the 195 UNFCCC countries have yet to submit their next round of nationally determined contributions (NDCs), or national climate plans, for 2031–35 before the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30). Climate plans are crucial to limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C.
The warning follows the European Union's Earth Observation Programme, Copernicus Climate Change Service's March forecast on the global average temperature breaching the 1.5°C long-term global warming threshold by September 2029 if the current trend continues.
The annually averaged global mean near-surface temperature for each year between 2025 and 2029 is predicted to be between 1.2°C and 1.9°C higher than the average over 1850–1900, the report titled WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update (2025–2029) said, emphasising the need for continued climate monitoring to inform decision-making and adapt to the growing effects of climate change.
It also said that there is an 80 per cent chance that at least one of the next five years will surpass 2024 as the warmest on record. Although exceptionally unlikely, there is now also a 1 per cent chance of at least one year exceeding 2°C of warming within the next five years. However, long-term warming (averaged over decades) remains below 1.5°C.
Citing the 10 warmest years on record, WMO deputy secretary general Ko Barrett said the new report provides no sign of respite in the coming years. '...this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet,' she said.
'Continued climate monitoring and prediction is essential to provide decision-makers with science-based tools and information to help us adapt,' Barrett added in a statement.
The 1.5°C threshold is a target that countries agreed to at the Paris climate conference in 2015 to avoid the worst effects of climate change. A permanent breach of the 1.5°C limit under the Paris Agreement refers to long-term warming over 20 years.
The WMO warned that temporary exceedances of such levels are expected to occur with increasing frequency as the underlying rise in global temperatures approaches the threshold.
'Every additional fraction of a degree of warming drives more harmful heatwaves, extreme rainfall events, intense droughts, melting of ice sheets, sea ice and glaciers, heating of the ocean, and rising sea levels,' the WMO report said.
Arctic warming in the next five extended winters (November to March) is likely to be over 3.5 times the global average, at 2.4°C above the average temperature during the 1991–2020 baseline. Further reductions in sea-ice concentration in the Barents Sea, Bering Sea, and Sea of Okhotsk are expected for March 2025–2029.
Predicted precipitation patterns for May–September 2025–2029, relative to the 1991–2020 baseline, suggest wetter-than-average conditions in the Sahel, Northern Europe, Alaska, and northern Siberia, and drier-than-average conditions in the Amazon.
In the case of South Asia, the WMO forecast indicated that the region—which was wetter than average in recent years, except 2023—will continue to experience such conditions till 2029, though this may not apply to every individual monsoon season in the period.