UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : Climate Predictions - Next Five Years

98% chance at least one in the next five years will beat the temperature record set in 2016, says WMO latest report

Global temperatures are set to reach new records in the next five years (2023-2027) and will be more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for at least one of the next five years, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Wednesday.

“There is a 66 per cent chance that we would exceed 1.5 degrees during the coming five years,” said Professor Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General, talking to media at the United Nations in Geneva.

And there is a 98 per cent likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record.

“We will see the warmest year on record during the coming five years once this La Niña phase is over,” predicted WMO’s Secretary-General. “These kinds of variations are a combination of these specific surface temperature variations and the impacts of climate change.”

Scientists are expecting a temporary warming effect from the naturally occurring El Niño and climate change to develop in the coming months. The cooling influence of La Niña over much of the past three years ended in March 2023.

“Climate change is proceeding and once we extract this impact of natural variability caused by the El Niño variability, it is once again demonstrating we are moving in the wrong direction when it comes to increases of temperatures and also when it comes to changes in the global precipitation patterns,” said Prof Taalas.

In addition to increasing global temperatures, human-induced greenhouse gases are leading to more ocean heating and acidification, sea ice and glacier melt, sea level rise and more extreme weather. All this will have far reaching repercussions to health, food security, water management and environment, said WMO.

Arctic warming is disproportionality high, according to the UN agency’s latest climate report. Compared to the 1991-2020 average, the temperature anomaly is predicted to be more than three times as large as the global mean anomaly when averaged over the next five northern hemisphere extended winters.

“The most dramatic changes we expect to happen is in the Arctic where we have already seen more than double the global warming taking place and during the coming five years the estimation is that Arctic temperatures would be three times the global average, so we will see more dramatic impacts there,” said Prof Taalas.

On a more pragmatic and encouraging note, Dr Leon Hermanson, climate scientist from the UK Met Office, insisted that cutting greenhouse gas emissions “will reduce the warming and will reduce these big impacts…it will be sad the day we pass 1.5(C) but it’s not a reason to give up, we have to continue working out how we can reduce emissions of greenhouse gases as much as possible even after that.”

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Climate Predictions Next Five Years - WMO

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