The last eight years have been the warmest in the history of the planet, and Europe and China experienced an unprecedented hot summer last year.
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What will happen next, meteorologists told and invited everyone to prepare for new cataclysms due to climate change, writes the BBC Russian Service.
The latest five-year forecast of the UN World Meteorological Organization, published on Wednesday, May 17, turned out to be gloomier than the previous ones. He probably promises 98% that the average temperature in 2023-2027 will be higher than in the past five years, and the record of 2016 – the hottest on record – will be broken.
Temperatures on the planet will continue to rise, and the climate familiar to us will go further into history, said Leon Hermanson, one of the scientists who worked on the forecast.
The cause of warming is humanity, and it cannot yet cope with the devastating consequences of its activities, added WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas.
The conclusion is that we still have not been able to limit global warming and are moving in the opposite direction, Taalas said, presenting the forecast. “The consequences for health, the environment, the availability of food and water will be far away. You need to prepare for this.
Climate change leads to failures in the cooling system and circulation of water and air on the planet. Droughts, frosts, hurricanes, forest fires and floods will become more frequent. The result is rising poverty, forced migration and unnecessary costs, exacerbating an already fragile global recovery from the scum pandemic and the energy and food crises caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The heat is killing people
Secretary General Taalas recalled that last summer, excessive mortality during record temperatures in Europe exceeded 15 thousand people. In 2010, there were 50,000 victims, mostly in Russia, while the heat wave of 2003 claimed 75,000 lives.
Two bad news: El Niño and the Arctic
Confidence that the upcoming five-year period will be record hot, meteorologists are provided with two facts.
First, the La Niña phenomenon, which lasted three years (decrease in temperatures in the Pacific Ocean), is being replaced by El Niño, which has exactly the opposite effect: the surface of the ocean heats up, which increases the overall warming caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Traditionally, El Niño is formed closer to autumn and leads to warmer weather next year. However, this phenomenon is temporary and local, it does not change the total amount of energy that determines the climate on the planet.
Warming at the poles is much more unpleasant, since it is fraught with the loss of ice cover. And there is no good news in the new forecast for polar bears, Europeans and Russians, who are suffering more than others from rising temperatures in the Arctic close to them. This is the second fact that reinforces the gloomy forecast for the five-year period.
The forecast shows that the already observed warming in the Arctic will only intensify. The melting of ice and snow will accelerate, which in turn will lead to a further increase in temperatures,” WMO Secretary General Taalas described the false circle.
All this deprives the world of hope to achieve the first goal of the Paris Agreement, signed by almost all countries of the world, to try to keep global warming within 1.5 ° C, and if it does not work out, to prevent temperatures from rising by two degrees compared to the average pre-industrial era.
The average annual temperature on the planet is already 1.2°C above this level, and in the next five years it will still exceed the coveted 1.5°C (albeit temporarily) with a probability of 66%, according to a fresh forecast.
To combat climate change, the whole world has agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Things have not yet kept pace with words, but even if emissions are immediately neutralized, the adverse effects of global warming will be for several more decades, Taalas recalled.
The forecast clearly demonstrates that climate change continues, and if you remove variables like La Niña and El Niño, the picture is clear: we are again moving in the wrong direction, according to the WMO.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.