By Andrew King*
One year in the next five will almost certainly be the hottest on record and there’s a two-in-three chance a single year will cross the crucial 1.5℃ global warming threshold, an alarming new report by the World Meteorological Organization predicts.
The report, known as the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, warns if humanity fails to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, increasingly worse heat records will tumble beyond this decade.
So what is driving the bleak outlook for the next five years? An expected El Niño, on top of the overall global warming trend, will likely push the global temperature to record levels.
Has the Paris Agreement already failed if the global average temperature exceeds the 1.5℃ threshold in one of the next five years? No, but it will be a stark warning of what’s in store if we don’t quickly reduce emissions to net zero.
Warming makes record heat inevitable
The World Meteorological Organization update says there is a 98% chance at least one of the next five years will be the hottest on record. And there’s a 66% chance of at least one year over the 1.5℃ threshold.
There’s also a 32% chance the average temperature over the next five years will exceed the 1.5℃ threshold. The chance of temporarily exceeding 1.5℃ has risen steadily since 2015, when it was close to zero. For the years between 2017 and 2021, it was a 10% chance.
Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have already driven up global average temperatures by more than 1℃ since the late 19th century. The update notes the 2022 average global temperature was about 1.15℃ above the 1850-1900 average, despite the cooling influence of La Niña conditions. Temperatures are now rising by about 0.2℃ per decade.
We now have more than a century of global mean temperature data. That means it should be getting harder, not easier, to achieve new records. If there was no trend, we would expect to see fewer records as time passes and the data we’ve collected better captures the full range of natural climate variability.
Instead, because we are warming the world so quickly, more heat records are being set globally and at the local level. The human influence on the climate is pushing temperatures to unprecedented highs with alarming frequency.
Add El Niño, then extreme highs are likely
The current record global average temperature dates back to 2016. A major El Niño event early that year pushed up the global average temperature.
El Niño events are associated with warmer-than-normal seas over much of the central and eastern Pacific. This helps warm the lower atmosphere and raise global temperatures by about 0.1℃. This might not sound like much, but with rapid background warming it’s often enough to break the previous record.
In the seven years since the current global temperature record, humanity has continued to intensify the greenhouse effect. This is making a new record ever more likely.
While the Pacific Ocean is currently ENSO-neutral, the chance of El Niño development during winter as well as the possibility of a positive Indian Ocean Dipole are contributing to the warmer and drier long-range forecast. El Niño WATCH continues: https://t.co/FMwRFTEnCH pic.twitter.com/yj2vCyPONS
— Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (@BOM_au) May 9, 2023
El Niño conditions are starting to form in the Pacific and are looking increasingly likely to take hold in June and July. This could be the first significant El Niño since 2016. An El Niño would greatly increase the chance of breaking that year’s record high global average temperature, particularly in 2024.
Does this mean the Paris Agreement has already failed?
Almost all nations around the world have signed the Paris Agreement. The aim is to limit global warming to well below 2℃ and preferably below 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels.
The prediction that an individual year above 1.5℃ global warming is more likely than not is alarming. But it doesn’t mean we have failed to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goals. The agreement aims to limit long-term global warming to a level that avoids major climate impacts, including ecosystem loss. One or two years that pop over the 1.5℃ level don’t constitute failure.
However, the world is getting closer to the 1.5℃ global warming level due to our continuing high greenhouse gas emissions. The forecast of a probable year that exceeds that level should serve as a warning.
The difference between 1.5°C & 3°C global warming means vastly different scenarios for the future.
— United Nations (@UN) May 11, 2023
Our survival on this planet hinges on these few degrees.
Addressing the climate crisis & limiting temperature rise is possible, if we #ActNow. https://t.co/X0Shwfcd3n via @UNFCCC pic.twitter.com/NUxzA1V18T
Yet another sign of humanity’s damage to the climate
Past inaction on reducing emissions and tackling climate change means we have already warmed the world by more than 1.2℃. Global emissions remain at near-record high levels, so we are continuing to intensify the greenhouse effect and warm the planet.
If we are to limit global warming to well below 2℃, then we must act so future generations don’t suffer a much less hospitable planet.
We have understood the solution for decades. We must reduce emissions to net zero to stop warming Earth. Countries such as Australia, with high historical emissions, have a leading role to play by decarbonising electricity supply and ramping down coal, oil and gas production in line with goals laid out by the United Nations.
Failure to act should not be considered an option. Otherwise we are locking in more record hot years and much worse climate change impacts for decades and centuries to come.
*Andrew King, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, The University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
67 Comments
Nah - we are gonna smash it -> rate we are moving I reckon we will get closer to 2 than 1.5.
And its not a biggie anyway - as soon as we are personally starving, running out of drinking water, involved in some resource wars that affect us directly and feel some more some massive weather events... then eventually twe will solve it. If not the rapid depopulation will result in a drop in temp over time anyway.
what problem.
Pretty much.
We have no chance of maintaining this way of life, consumption-wise. The question is: Can we maintain another? And the answer is: A qualified maybe.
But it will require a population reduction (and nature won't be kind) and a material/energy throughput reduction, of some orders of magnitude. Climate will just be a background drumbeat; expect more disruptive weather events.
And Profile......
If Covid has taught us anything, it's that many people are generally unwilling to make even small changes for the wellbeing and safety of others, even in the face of demonstrable risk and scientific consensus.
I am not optimistic about how populations are going to cope with the imminent changes coming their way.
Global warming due to climate change And you think humans care or have any power to control climate? You got to be kidding me guys.
Stop scamming people on this climate crap when you know that just one Tonga volcano eruption sent so much gases and water vapour into the air that humans haven't done in last 100 years.
So the thousand or so scientists who contributed towards the last IPCC report on "this climate crap", and the 60,000+ peer reviewed studies that were assessed in its writing, are all wrong, and you know better than all of them, just because...you read some bs on the internet once?
Who is paying these scientists and who's Paying those publishers who publish it? Nothing is free these days mate except the benefit money paid by this government 💰💰🤑🤑.
So honestly I don't know what the truth is these days because behind every article there is a person who is paid to write it. Who pays them is the question.
It's not like we can ride the fossil fuel train forever anyway, they are a finite resource. We only get to choose when to try to ditch it. Do we do it now while we have the fossil fuels to build the new infrastructure, or later when the hard decisions will be forced on us even more harshly.
I guess this is generally considered to be a problem for the next generation that won't trouble the average climate change skeptic.
Ask Chat GPT....
Whilst the articles bias will depend on its (biased) developers, content feeders and owners.. you will get as good an article as anywhere (most aritcles are written by the Great AI anyway now) and u will feel its written just for you, will reinforce your beliefs and will be really well written and persuasive.
i would be wary of it on anything lol.
the founder of the biggest AI company (and most leading tech company ceos) are begging the govt to regulate themselves asap... that alone something tells me they already know things are heading downhill quickly.
All hail the GreatAI
You miss the point.
What you need to do, is research the science from first principles.
What you are doing, is giving an incorrect opinion, 50% exposure - which points to your pre-needed bias.
I just happen to be pruning in one of my glasshouses - it's warmer than outside, so physics still seems to be applying.
:)
A glass house being warmer is necessarily related to CO2 levels
and yes research the science from first principles including causation not correlation
The choice of both 1.5 degrees and a "tipping" point is also interesting as it is difficult to find why both became such a big part of the message from a science perspective as opposed to a political perspective
There will be feed-back loops, and 1.5 is still in unknown territory triggering-them-wise. If they take off, it's not just 2, it's 6. Or...
The trees you plant tend to get burnt in the wildfires; which exacerbate; the tundra melts, releasing methane; the ice melts, reducing albedo; the temperature migrates away from the Equator even faster (some life-forms can out-run, not trees, obviously - currently fish are migrating away at 5-10 km/year).
We don't want to go there.
At least, those of us capable of rational though don't want to go there. Others are perhaps less cognitive...
This website, wattsupwiththat.com, is a skeptic website but you wont find MSM quoting any of its reference articles. Some of the commentators are over the top. At least you get a counter view, not like MSM and a few climate alarmist commentators on this website. Frequent reference to the "physics". Prefer these physicists to the physics espoused by one or two commentators on interest5. Atmospheric Physicist Richard Lindzen, former Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, a position he held from 1983 until his retirement in 2013 and Steven E. Koonin, University Professor at New York University, a theoretical physicist.
Groan. All disciplines have their share of wacky outsiders who manage to convince themselves that circles are squares (sometimes helped by a bit of industry funding). At least with climate science we are now down to a few easily dismantled strawman arguments.
https://skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Richard_Lindzen.htm
https://skepticalscience.com/review-koonin-unsettled.html
Well yes, lindzen must be wacky. He ignores physics to support an economic ideology that's sending the planet to hell. That takes a special sort of stupid. Maybe he just gets off on the attention he gets from his fellow denier cult? I can't recall him doing any work in the climate sphere since his discredited " lense" theory 20 odd years ago. Seems your little bespectacled physicist wasn't averse to taking some cash from the fossil industry also.
Gareth Morgan decided to look at both sides..start here-
Morgan aims for ordinary person's guide to climate change | Stuff.co.nz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q2YHGIlUDk
If you have the time, this is an interesting watch Dr Judith Curry is an American Climatologist and talks with Jordan Peterson, about the incredibly complex science, and political agendas behind the climate change movement. It really helps with understanding how the world has gotten to where it is in this whole debacle. She was originally inside the IPCC circle but got "shifted off to denier camp" after she called out some of the appalling scientific standards within the IPCC scientific community.
Well, it’s way more qualified than your opinion.
I feel sorry for you Powderdown, perpetually waiting for your doomsday prophecies to arrive. Perhaps if you determined exactly when you believe the apocalypse arrives, then once that time expires and the world just carries on the same as always, it may help you resume of a more normal productive life.
You're away off target.
And that suggests you're off in other ways too. You had better hope that our grandchildren feel sorry for us - but I doubt they will.
Try doing some research please, it might add to the debate (that pot did not).
This is free, a textbook by a UCAL Professor specialising in astrophysics. A cut above both of us. It's a free download; one of us has bothered to read it, and is therefore perhaps less ignorant than the other.
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/980
Maybe you are right, maybe your wrong but the fact of the matter is even if every single person in NZ was wiped off the face of the earth it’s not going to make one ounce of difference when countries like China, India and US, as well as every single developing country continues to do what they are doing. So you may as well let your kids enjoy a prosperous life while they can, and you never know the apocalypse might not eventuate.
There are no sign apocalypse is eventuating - no matter how much PDK and the climate change industrial complex wants it. Unpredicted global greening is ruining the doomsday cults party. Boring inter-glacial warming isn't matching the runaway predictions. NZ will be back to the pre 1300AD kumara growing range of our forefathers - hardly an apocalypse.
"Climate change seems a plausible explanation for the retreat of gardening, if not necessarily the only one. Kumara will not produce in soil temperatures of less than 15 C for five consecutive months, conditions barely met in central New Zealand even today.20 A northward retreat of 150 km on temperature grounds implies a decline in mean annual temperature at sea level of about 1 C. Looking at evidence of changing temperatures over the last millennium, it is apparent that an early period, estimated as 0.3-0.50C warmer on average than the twentieth century, was followed by a cold period of similar deviation below the twentieth century average. This is recorded in various sources."
That isn't the Judith Curry that owns a forecasting company for gulf of Mexico drilling platforms is it? Unsurprisingly, yes it is!
"Anyone recommend a good review article on climate change"
If you want a good book, I'd recommend the recent "Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom" by greenpeace founder Patrick Moore. That highlights the major objections to the CO2 induced climate change narrative in plain language. This paper's a bit old but it's a good primer on why you might be skeptical of the CO2 narrative and temperature records in general. You could follow some scientists on youtube for example see what Princeton University physics Professor William Happer has to say, that guy advised the White House on climate change back in the 70s and 80s. You could look at a few of the talks given by scientists at International Conference on Climate Change ICCC. Read profile's posts on interest.co.nz, that guy/girl is a legend :)
Why the claim Moore and Greenpeace have an association? Moore is now a corporate shill, he may have been a boy scout 60 years ago too, but thats not relevant either!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QWM_PgnoAtA&pp=ygUOTW9vcmUgUm91bmR1cCA%3D
Its disappointing (and annoying) that an article from a senior University lecturer in climate science writes articles that are emotive to this degree ( looks more like a political message than a science one)
I understand that he is trying to scare people into a set of beliefs and therefore action but personally I think it would be more useful ( effective?) if he just stuck to the facts
If you watch the world weather you will see that records are being broken now almost daily, be it heat, cold or rainfall. I would suggest that its already too late to even worry about it now, potentially its irreversible anyway because its got to the point of being a self sustaining positive feedback loop. Change is already causing massive migration in some countries, all it takes is crops and livestock to fail a couple of years running and its all over.
Individual responsibility will get nowhere in this debate. Just like the plastic industry pumping recycling campaigns to encourage us all to be the solution to a problem they created, whilst abdicating all responsibility from themselves while they produce ever-increasing volumes of plastics for useless consumption. Or, ICE engine producers buying out or shutting down viable alternatives that could significantly threaten them over the last 50+ years.
The trouble is you can either go for the culture-change approach which doesn;t seem to be taking hold at any pace, or you go after those that contribute the most to the problem - however such industries hold power, money and likely political influence to dissuade this.
We are all too comfortable in the west. The labour gov has shown it's intolerance for inflicting short term pain, over long term human survival. Transition to a low carbon economy is going to cause pain and upheaval. There's no soft option. Of course the howls from the other side drown any attempts to change direction. Intractable situation.
How are you enjoying riding that bicycle everywhere ? fact is people say they care but the reality is nothing changes. Some rush out and buy an EV in an attempt to alleviate any guilt but fact is that's making next to no difference. People are going to continue to do what they have been doing, nobody wants a drop in living standards. Its too late to even worry about it. Smart people here like PDK get it, the rest are clueless or simply don't care, too busy in the rat race or just trying to keep their head above water.
Riding the bike everywhere in Christchurch is great, growing numbers of people joining me these days. If you live near the city center, it's generally as quick and more convenient than taking a car thanks to the increase in cycle infrastructure. For those who live further out, e-bikes are getting more available. I can't remember the last time I took a car just to move myself around, would be well over a year ago. Seems like an insanely wasteful way to travel.
I'm with Palmtree - yes, it's probably heading for collapse - but I have to look my grandkids in the eye, and say 'I did what I could do'.
So I have bikes, and use them. And I don't live in a flat city, either. And I'm 68. If you're going to do something other than walk, bikes are about the best thing ever invented. I love 'em.
Happy to be convinced. Show me the assumptions behind the model that is used to forecast future climate change. Until then I just simply believe that this is used to make money, gain power and prestige, and scare the masses into submission. As I say…..happy to be convinced but I need to know the baseline assumptions.
It’s the assumptions that matter. No amount of scientific jibber jabber changes the fact. For example, if my kids continue to grow at 3cm a year, by 50 they will be 10 foot tall based on the assumption that they will continue to grow at the same rate. Great model, but are the assumptions realistic? Without showing the assumptions any forecast is a joke.
Faith is your problem - I'm guessing a catholic residual, but maybe that's a long bow.
But faith is indeed blind, and self-interest (plus fear) are great drivers. Funny how they still come out of the woodwork, even at this late - and obvious - stage.
Knowledge moves on, and makes those who don't, look silly. For instance, there is no heaven up there somewhere, nor a hell down there somewhere. Or a god - of any number or format. But those who residually cling to such beliefs still exist, even in the face of science. Beats me how they can do it, but there you go. This is similar; reluctance to accept.
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