1.5°C tipping point in next five years: WMO

NEW DELHI: There is a 40% chance that the annual average global temperature will be 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than preindustrial levels – a ceiling scientists have warned needs to be avoided to prevent devastating impacts of the climate crisis – in the next five years, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said in a report on Thursday.

The figure is significant because most global leaders committed to taking actions that would limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and well below 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century while signing the Paris Agreement in 2015.

The findings of the report prompted Petteri Taalas, the WMO secretary general, to warn that the world was getting “measurably and inexorably” closer to the dangerous threshold. He underlined it was another wake-up call that the world needed to fast-track commitments to slash greenhouse gas emissions and achieve carbon neutrality.

The 2015 Paris Climate Accord set the long-term 1.5-degree warming threshold. The Intergovernmental Panel on Clinormal mate Change (IPCC), two years later, warned that a breach of the threshold will mark a menacing milestone in the planet’s warming. A 2018 IPCC report said limiting global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius would require “rapid and far-reaching” transitions in all sectors. The global net human-caused carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions need to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by

2030, reaching net zero around 2050, to avoid the ceiling.

The Paris accord seeks to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.

Taalas underlined these are more than just statistics and increasing temperatures mean more melting ice, higher sea levels, more heatwaves, and other extreme weather, and greater impacts on food security, health, environment, and sustainable development.

“This study shows – with a high level of scientific skill – that we are getting measurably and inexorably closer to the lower target of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change,” Taalas said.

Warming of the north Indian Ocean during the next five years, particularly the Arabian Sea, could make India even more vulnerable to deadly cyclones. Maps on surface temperature anomalies compared to 1981-2010 period show Arabian Sea could be 0.5 to 1 degree C warmer than the 29-year period.

India’s average temperature has risen by around 0.7 degree C during 1901-2018.

But sea surface temperature (SST) of the tropical Indian Ocean has risen by 1 degree C on average during 1951–2015, markedly higher than the global average SST warming of 0.7°C, over the same period according to “Assessment of Climate Change over the Indian Region”, a report of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).

The global average temperature was about 1.2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels despite the cooling effect of La Nina in 2020, WMO said in its State of the Global Climate 2020 report.

Last year was one of the three warmest years on record. The six years since 2015 have been the warmest on record.

Year 2011-2020 was the warmest decade on record, the report highlighted.