This is the first time in human history that the global temperature is rising this high, says a top researcher at the British Met Office.
Global warming is accelerating strongly, it appears World Meteorological Organization (you switch to another service) About the WMO report that you reported on The British Broadcasting Company BBC (you will switch to another service).
According to climate scientists, global warming will accelerate above the 1.5 degree limit by 2027 with a two-thirds probability. 1.5 degrees was agreed in the 2015 Paris climate agreement as a limit beyond which the climate should not warm, as the result will be catastrophic weather phenomena.
So far, the warmest measured year was 2016, when the average temperature was 1.28 degrees above the reference value, i.e. the pre-industrial temperature. Scientists are practically certain that a new annual record will be set in the next four years.
The globe is now being warmed both by abundant and continuous climate emissions and by the weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, which is now turning into the El Niño phenomenon. As a result, the temperature of the entire Earth’s climate rises by leaps and bounds. In recent years, the reverse La Niña phenomenon has prevailed, due to which temperatures drop slightly.
In order to say on a scientific level that the Paris climate agreement has been lost, average temperatures higher than 1.5 degrees must be measured for 20 years. So the WMO does not yet announce that the Paris Agreement has been lost.
– This report does not yet mean that the boundaries of the Paris Agreement will be exceeded permanently. In any case, according to the WMO, it is alarming that we will break the 1.5 degree limit temporarily more and more often, says the WMO Director General Petteri Taalas.
– We are now within touching distance of exceeding the 1.5 degree limit in terms of the annual average temperature. This is the first time in human history that we are this close, said the director of the long-range forecast office of the Met Office of the British Meteorological Department at a press conference Adam Scaife.
– I think this is the strongest and clearest statistic in this report, Scaife continued.