The United Nations (UN) has warned that the years 2023 to 2027 will be the warmest five-year period ever recorded as greenhouse gases and El Nino combine to send temperatures soaring.
According to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), global temperatures are soon set to exceed the more ambitious target set out in the Paris climate accords, with a two-thirds chance that one of the next five years will do so.
“There is a 98-percent likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record,” the WMO said.
The WMO noted that there was a 66 percent chance that annual global surface temperatures will exceed 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for at least one of the years from 2023 to 2027, with a range of 1.1C to 1.8C forecasted for each of those five years.
In a statement released on Wednesday, WMO’s chief Petteri Taalas said: “WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency.”
“A warming El Nino is expected to develop in the coming months, and this will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory. This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment. We need to be prepared,” he added.
Earlier, the WMO bared that the chances of El Nino developing were 60 percent by the end of July and 80 percent by the end of September.
