50% chance 1.5°C warming breach will occur by ’26

There’s a 50% chance that annual average global temperature will breach the tipping point of 1.5 degrees Celsius at least once in the next five years, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in its latest update.

The annual mean global surface temperature between 2022 and 2026 is likely to be between 1.1 and 1.7 degrees higher than pre-industrial times, and there is a high chance (93%) that one of these years will be the warmest on record, dislodging 2016 from that dubious distinction, the United Nations weather agency said.

There’s a 93% chance that the five-year mean for 2022-26 will be higher than the past five years of 2017-21, the WMO said in its Global Annual To Decadal Update.

“This study shows – with a high level of scientific skill – that we are getting measurably closer to temporarily reaching the lower target of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change,” WMO secretary general Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

Keeping atmospheric warming within 1.5 degrees is crucial to staving off the worst impacts of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had said in its landmark Red Alert report in August last year.

“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise,” Taalas said.

Temperatures in 2022 are likely to be higher than the 19912020 average in almost all regions of the planet, except parts of the Southern Ocean, South Atlantic, and Pacific Ocean, Alaska, western Canada, and India. The annual mean anomaly for 2022 predicts higher rainfall in India this year.

“Our latest climate predictions show that continued global temperature rise will continue, with an even chance that one of the years between 2022 and 2026 will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” Leon Hermanson of the UK Met Office, the lead author of the report, said in a statement. “We are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5 degrees Celsius could be exceeded for an extended period.”

If the predictions come true, it would mean the world is set to miss the more ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.

For India, it could mean increasing frequency of severe heatwaves, cyclones and extreme rainfall, experts said.

“The IPCC has made it clear that with every degree of warming we are going to see an increase in intensity and frequency of heatwaves or warm periods and an increase in overall rainfall as well as a spike in extreme rain events,” said DS Pai, director at the Institute of Climate Change Studies, Kerala, and a former scientist at India Meteorological Department. “This just means that we need to prepare for these extremes.”

“The reason WMO may have forecast India to have a cooler period during 2022 could be linked to more rainfall and clouding over India during the rest of the year,” Pai added.

“This is not a surprise,” said Roxy Mathew Koll, climate scientist at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. “We were expecting global mean temperatures to breach 1.5 degrees during 2020-40 and 2 degrees during 2040-60, but we are not yet prepared.”

“What concerns me most is that the global commitment towards reducing emissions is not sufficient to keep these temperatures from shooting up,” Koll said. “We are already seeing 1.1 degrees rise in mean global temperatures and their impacts. Arabian Sea Cyclones have increased by more than 50% and extreme rains causing floods have tripled during the past few decades. These severe weather events are projected to increase further while we reach 1.5 degrees.”

The WMO’s State of the Global Climate report notes that 2015-21 was the warmest seven years since records began in 1850.

In 2021, the global average temperature was 1.1 degrees above the pre-industrial levels. WMO said the EL Nino weather phenomenon is unlikely during December-February 2022-23, but the chances of La Nina to continue is higher this year.

La Niña refers to the largescale cooling of the ocean surface temperatures in central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean associated with strong monsoon and above average rains and colder winters in India. El Nino is associated with drought or weak monsoon over the subcontinent.