UN says strong chance average warming will top 1.5C in 4 years

TDT | Geneva

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The United Nations warned on Wednesday that there is a 70% chance that average warming from 2025 to 2029 would exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius international benchmark.

The planet is therefore expected to remain at historic levels of warming after the two hottest years ever recorded in 2023 and 2024, according to an annual climate report published by the World Meteorological Organization, the UN’s weather and climate agency.

“We have just experienced the 10 warmest years on record,” said the WMO’s deputy secretary-general Ko Barrett.

“Unfortunately, this WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet.”

The 2015 Paris climate accords aimed to limit global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels -- and to pursue efforts to peg it at 1.5C.

The targets are calculated relative to the 1850-1900 average, before humanity began industrially burning coal, oil and gas, which emit carbon dioxide (CO2) -- the greenhouse gas largely responsible for climate change.

The more optimistic 1.5C target is one that growing numbers of climate scientists now consider impossible to achieve, as CO2 emissions are still increasing.

Longer-term outlook

To smooth out natural climate variations, several methods assess long-term warming, the WMO’s climate services director Christopher Hewitt told a press conference.

One approach combines observations from the past 10 years with projections for the next decade (2015-2034). With this method, the estimated current warming is 1.44C.

There is no consensus yet on how best to assess long-term warming.

The EU’s climate monitor Copernicus believes that warming currently stands at 1.39C, and projects 1.5C could be reached in mid-2029 or sooner.