World edging towards ‘increasingly harmful’ climate threshold

Canberra: Earth has a 50:50 chance of temporarily reaching the 1.5C warming threshold “at least once” in the next five years, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) says.

That figure is the lower target of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change; between 2017 - 2021 the chance of exceeding that 1.5C threshold was just 10 per cent.

In a new climate update, issued today, WMO revised that statistic, warning there’s now a 50 per cent chance the threshold of 1.5C will be hit “at least once” between 2022 and 2026.

Further to that, there’s a 93 per cent chance once of those years will be the warmest on record.

Lead researcher from the Met Office Dr Leon Hermanson said there’s an “even chance” the threshold could be met any year through that period.

“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 1.5C above pre-industrial levels,” he said.

c threshold of the Paris Agreement.

9News