UK’s Met Office Warns Global Temperature Could Soar Beyond 1.5°C Threshold Within Five Years
Breaching the Paris accord’s designated limit temporarily doesn’t mean all hope is lost for the long-term target, experts explain, “but it does ring an alarm bell.”
The Met Office reported this week that global average temperature for 2019 to 2023 will likely be between 1.03°C and 1.57°C above pre-industrial levels. (Photo: Danicek/Shutterstock)
As NASA on Wednesday confirmed that the past five years have been the hottest on record, the United Kingdom’s national weather service warned that the next five years could see global average surface temperature temporarily surpass the end-of-the-century target of the Paris climate agreement.
The Met Office forecasts that the average for 2019 to 2023 will likely be between 1.03°C and 1.57°C above pre-industrial levels, fluctuating each year depending on variations in human activities that produce greenhouse gas emissions as well as natural phenomena such as La Ninã and El Niño.
The global average reached 1.0°C for the first time in 2015, “and the following three years have all remained close to this level,” Adam Scaife, head of long-range prediction at the Met Office, noted in a statement. If that trend continues as expected, the decade from 2014 could be “warmest in more than 150 years of records.”
@metoffice Our 5year global average surface temperature forecast predicts that 2019 to 2023 will be near or above 1.0°C above pre-industrial levels. If observations track the forecast, it would make 2014-2023 the warmest run of years since records began. http://bit.ly/2SeCq6N
Forecast suggests Earth’s warmest period on recordThe forecast for the global average surface temperature for the five-year period to 2023 is predicted to be near or above 1.0 °C above pre-industrial levels, says the Met Office. metoffice.gov.uk
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