EARTH COULD HIT KEY TEMPERATURE MARK

Since signing the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, nations around the world have focused on one climate goal: limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels this century.

But as greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning have continued to increase, a new report from the World Meteorological Organization shows global temperatures could temporarily hit that threshold within the next five years.

The WMO stated Monday that there is a 50 percent chance that the annual global temperature will hit this mark by 2026. The probability is only increasing with time. In 2015, the chance of temporarily observing 1.5 degrees of warming was zero, underscoring the rapid pace of human-caused climate change.

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State, said that while global temperature readings may temporarily spike to the 1.5-degree threshold in the next several years, the real concern occurs when it is surpassed over a period of many years.

“When we talk about the need to avoid 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming in a climate change context, we’re talking about the longterm trend, not the values for individual years,” he told InsideClimateNews.