Since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015, the objective of the international community has been to limit the increase in the global average temperature of the planet by the end of the century to below 1.5 degrees (or at most, two degrees of increase) compared to what it was at the beginning of the industrial era to reduce the negative effects of climate change. A goal that has been moving away as the years went by without the commitments of the countries achieving a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, which have continued to rise.

This Wednesday, a team of British scientists warns that not only will those 1.5 degrees be exceeded before the end of the century but that there is a 66% chance that it will be exceeded between 2023 and 2027, as reported by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Global temperatures are likely to reach unprecedented levels over the next five years, driven by heat-trapping greenhouse gases and the natural El Niño.

And it is that another of the estimates offered is that there is a 98% probability that at least one of the next five years, as well as the five years as a whole, will be the warmest ever recorded.

"These data do not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5°C level foreseen in the Paris Agreement, which refers to long-term warming for many years. Even so, WMO is sounding the alarm that we will exceed the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis and with increasing frequency," WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a press release.

According to scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) linked to the UN, a global warming of 1.5 °C will aggravate the climate-related risks to which natural and human systems are currently exposed, although to a lesser extent than if global warming reaches 2 °C.

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Climate crisis.

From extreme heat stress in Spain to record melting of the Alps: 2022 was a year of "unprecedented heat" in Europe

  • Writing: TERESA GUERRERO
  • Writing: ALVARO MATILLA (INFOGRAPHIC)

From extreme heat stress in Spain to record melting of the Alps: 2022 was a year of "unprecedented heat" in Europe

The forecast suggests that in the coming months an episode of El Niño will be established, which exerts a warming effect. The El Niño phenomenon, coupled with the effects of human-induced climate change, will raise global temperatures to unknown limits, Taalas said: "This will have far-reaching implications for health, food security, water management and the environment. We have to be prepared," he warns.

In 2015, when the Paris Agreement was signed during the Climate Summit held in the French capital, the probability that at some point global warming would exceed pre-industrial levels by 1.5 °C was almost zero, but since then that probability has not stopped increasing, according to this new study. Thus, in the period from 2017 to 2021, the probability of exceeding the indicated threshold was 10%.

1.15 degrees of increase already recorded

In 2022 – which was the second hottest year in Europe since records began and whose summer was globally the warmest – the global average temperature exceeded by about 1.15 °C the average of the period between 1850 and 1900.

According to climate scientists, the cooling effect exerted by La Niña conditions over the past three years temporarily slowed the longer-term warming trend. But the La Niña episode already ended in March 2023 and, according to forecasts, in the coming months conditions characteristic of an El Niño episode will be established. Normally, El Niño increases global temperatures in the year following its formation, which in this case would be 2024.

This new study is published in advance of the World Meteorological Congress to be held between May 22 and June 2, a meeting during which efforts will be made to strengthen meteorological and climate services to support adaptation to climate change. Among the measures to be implemented is the so-called 'Early Warnings for All', designed to protect the population from increasingly extreme weather events, as well as a new infrastructure to monitor greenhouse gases.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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