[D66] UN: World could hit 1.5-degree warming threshold by 2024

[R.O.]

UN: World could hit 1.5-degree warming threshold by 2024
By
FRANK JORDANS
NADINE ACHOUI-LESAGE
apnews.com
3 min
View Original

GENEVA (AP) — The world could see annual global temperatures pass a key 
threshold for the first time in the coming five years, the U.N. weather 
agency said Thursday.

The World Meteorological Organization said forecasts suggest there’s a 
20% chance that global temperatures will be 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 
Fahrenheit) higher than the pre-industrial average in at least one year 
between 2020 and 2024.

The 1.5 C mark is the level countries agreed to cap global warming at in 
the 2015 Paris accord. While a new annual high might be followed by 
several years with lower average temperatures, breaking that threshold 
would be seen as further evidence that international efforts to curb 
climate change aren’t working.

“It shows how close we’re getting to what the Paris Agreement is trying 
to prevent,” said Maxx Dilley, director of climate services at the World 
Meteorological Organization.

Dilley said it’s not impossible that countries will manage to achieve 
the target set in Paris, of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees 
Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), ideally no more than 1.5 C, by the end of the 
century.

“But any delay just diminishes the window within which there will still 
be time to reverse these trends and to bring the temperature back down 
into those limits,” he told The Associated Press.

Scientists say average temperatures around the world are already at 
least 1 C higher now than from 1850-1900 because of man-made greenhouse 
emissions.

The Geneva-based WMO said there’s a 70% chance that the 1.5-degree mark 
will be exceeded in a single month between 2020 and 2024. The five-year 
period is expected to see annual average temperatures that are 0.91 C to 
1.59 C higher than pre-industrial averages, it said.

The forecast is contained in an annual climate outlook based on several 
long-term computer models compiled under the leadership of the United 
Kingdom’s Met Office.

Climate models have proven accurate in the past because they are based 
on well-understood physical equations about the effect of greenhouse 
gases in the atmosphere, said Anders Levermann, a scientist at the 
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research near Berlin who was not 
involved in the report.

“We can make more accurate predictions about the climate than about the 
weather,” he said. “The physics behind it is solid as a rock.”

Leverman said that while hitting the 1.5-degree threshold was “a 
screaming warning signal” it should not become a distraction from 
efforts to reduce man-made greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.

WMO noted that the models used for the forecast don’t consider the 
impact that the coronavirus pandemic might have on reducing emissions of 
planet-warming gases such as carbon dioxide. But experts say any 
pandemic-related dip in emissions is likely to be short-lived and could 
actually hurt efforts to end the use of fossil fuels.

“The impact of the coronavirus is a partial shutdown of the economy 
worldwide,” said Levermann. ”But changing the way we do things can only 
be done with a healthy economy.”

Dilley, the WMO official, said record temperatures such as those 
currently seen in the Arctic are the effect of emissions pumped into the 
atmosphere decades ago, so attempts to alter the future course of the 
climate need to happen soon.

“This is not something that can be stopped on a dime,” he said. “It’s 
like an ocean liner that takes a long, long time to turn.”

“This is the message that people in their daily lives and how they vote 
and every other way they should be concerned about,” he added.

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Jordans contributed from Berlin.

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