The world is about to break a crucial temperature record

The world is poised to break an important temperature threshold for the first time ever in the next 5 years according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization.

According to the report, global temperatures will surge over the next five years and it will lead to the first time we’ve seen the world break the all-too-important 1.5 Celsius mark.  

Climate scientists have been warning for years that our world needs to stay below 1.5°C (2.7 Fahrenheit) to avoid the worst effects of global warming but it could happen sooner than we previously thought.  

The World Meteorological Organization predicted in a recent report that our world has a 66% chance of hitting the 1.5°C target sometime between 2023 and 2027, and a 32% chance we won’t exceed it. 

The next five years will be the warmest we've had on record according to the report and there is a 98% chance temperatures will exceed those seen between 2018 and 2022. 

In 2015, world leaders gathered in France and signed The Paris Agreement, which laid out the future of the battle to beat climate change and put in place the language that set a global temperature rise of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels as the world’s target goal.

Luckily, the new research showing we will probably exceed 1.5°C at some point in the next five years does not mean that our world will exceed this crucial limit permanently.

“This report does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5°C level specified in the Paris Agreement which refers to long-term warming over many years,” explained the Secretary-General of the WMO Petteri Taalas in a press release from the organization. 

“However,” Taalas added, the “WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency,” which is a situation we should be worried about if we want to keep the world at a livable temperature in our lifetimes. 

One of the big problems Taalas pointed out was that the warming weather over the next five years will undoubtedly have consequences for our world and he’s already predicting that a warming El Niño this year will push world temperatures into “uncharted territory.”

“This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management, and the environment.” Professor Taalas explained. “We need to be prepared.” 

According to BBC News, the World Meteorological Organization has provided detailed predictions on the chances of breaking the 1.5°C temperature threshold since 2020, and at that time there was only a 20% chance our world was going to surpass the mark. 

Last year the odds of finally breaking a mean global temperature of 1.5°C had risen to 50%. Combine that with this year's dire prediction and there's a clear path showing us moving in the wrong direction when it comes to bringing our global temperatures down. 

"This report must be a rallying cry to intensify global efforts to tackle the climate crisis,” Parr continued, adding that every "tenth of a degree of warming we can avoid will reduce the chances of extreme weather across the world and its human cost".

The highest mean global temperature ever reached was in 2016 when the world hit 1.28°C above pre-industrial levels according to reporting from BBC News. 

"We really are now within reach of a temporary exceedance of 1.5C for the annual mean temperature, and that's the first time in human history we've been that close," said Adam Scaife of the UK’s Meteorological Office. A fact that should be worrying everyone...