LONDON: Over the next several years, our overheated globe is set to breach a critical temperature barrier for the first time, according to experts.
There is already a 66% risk that we will exceed the 1.5C global warming barrier between now and 2027, according to researchers.
The likelihood is increasing as a result of human-caused emissions and the anticipated El Nio weather phenomenon this summer, the BBC said.
Scientists warn that, even though it would be alarming, any breach would probably only last a short time.
If the barrier is reached, fossil fuel emissions from industrialization will have increased by 1.5C since the second half of the 19th century, when they first started to significantly increase.
The threshold of 1.5°C has come to represent international climate change debates. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations committed to “pursue efforts” to keep global temperature increases to 1.5C.
Longer heatwaves, more violent storms, and wildfires would all result from annual warming of above 1.5C for a decade or two.
However, reaching the level in one of the upcoming years would not constitute a violation of the Paris limit. According to scientists, it is still possible to stop global warming by drastically reducing emissions.
The likelihood that the globe will surpass the 1.5C barrier in any given year has been estimated by the World Meteorological Organisation since 2020.
They stated at the time that there was a less than 20% possibility of breaking 1.5C in the upcoming five years.
This had reached 50% by the end of last year, and it has now risen to 66%, which, in the words of the experts, makes it “more likely than not.”
The number represents how much or how little the Earth has warmed or cooled relative to the long-term global average, not the actual temperature of the entire planet.
Scientists estimate how hot the globe was before our current reliance on coal, oil, and gas by using average temperature data from the years between 1850 and 1900.
They had long thought that a 2C increase in global temperature would be the threshold for severe effects, but in 2018 they dramatically altered this prediction and found that exceeding 1.5C would be catastrophic for the whole planet.
Global temperatures were 1.28C above pre-industrial levels in 2016, the warmest year on record, as a result of the preceding several decades’ worth of global warming.
