1.5°C tipping point in next five years: WMO

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 NEW DELHI: