UN report warns of more global temperature records

Geneva: Global average temperatures are likely to continue at or near record levels in the next five years, with Arctic temperature anomalies expected to continue to be higher than the global mean, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) stated on Thursday.

The conclusion was drawn from the WMO report ‘Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update 2026-2035’, produced by Britain’s Met Office and the WMO Lead Centre for Annual to Decadal Climate Prediction, which synthesised predictions contributed by 13 institutes.

The update report also takes a look at the observed climate over the past five years and gives regional predictions for temperatures and precipitation over the next five years, Xinhua news agency reported.

According to the report, annual global mean near-surface temperatures during the period from 2026 to 2030 will range between 1.3 and 1.9 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 average. It is likely that one year coming between 2026 and 2030 will surpass 2024 as the warmest year on record.

It predicted that the average global temperature for 2026-2030 will likely exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 average, while no single year during the period is likely to exceed 2.0 degrees Celsius.

The predicted average temperature in the central tropical Pacific indicates a tendency towards El Nino conditions in the next five years, particularly in 2027 and 2028.

Leon Hermanson, lead author of the report, said: “There is an El Nino predicted for the end of 2026, which increases the chances of the following year, 2027, being the next record-breaking year.”

The levels of 1.5 and 2.0 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial baseline specified in the Paris Agreement on climate change refer to long-term warming sustained over an extended period, typically assessed over 20 years. Individual years with annual global mean temperatures exceeding these levels do not mean that the long-term temperature goals of the Paris Agreement are out of reach. Temporary exceedances are expected to occur with increasing frequency as the underlying rise in global temperature approaches these levels.

Another key finding of the report is that Arctic temperatures over the next five extended northern hemisphere winters running from November to March are predicted to be 2.8 degrees Celsius above average temperatures for 1991-2020, an anomaly more than three and a half times that of the global mean temperature anomaly over the same period.
IANS