By Marco Lopez – Editor-in-Chief, Climate Spotlight
Every additional fraction of a degree of global warming drives up the impact of heat waves, extreme rainfall events, floods, droughts, melting ice sheets, sea ice, and glaciers. It heats the oceans and raises sea levels, wreaking havoc on organisms and ecosystems. Last year, 2024, was recorded as the warmest year on record — a new study from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows an 80% chance that at least one of the next five years will exceed that record.
The next five years are expected to continue the trend of hot days and record global temperatures. There is a 70% chance that the five-year average warming for 2025–2029 will be more than 1.5°C.
The average global mean near-surface temperature for each year between 2025 and 2029 is predicted to be between 1.2°C and 1.9°C above the 1850–1900 average — there is an 86% chance that at least one year will be more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
“We have just experienced the ten warmest years on record,” said WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett. “Unfortunately, this WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems, and our planet.”
She stressed that continued climate monitoring and prediction is essential to provide decision-makers with science-based tools and information to help us adapt.
The report shows that long-term warming (averaged over decades) remains below 1.5°C — meaning the level has not yet breached the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting the increase to 1.5°C. However, the WMO warns that current warming is already driving more harmful natural hazards.
“The current level of warming already drives more harmful heatwaves, extreme rainfall events, intense droughts, melting of ice sheets, sea ice, and glaciers, heating of the ocean, and rising sea levels,” the report states.
Under the Paris Agreement, countries agree to hold the increase in long-term global average surface temperature below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Small Island Developing States (SIDS), including the Caribbean and other developing nations, along with the scientific community, have decried this lower goal and have warned repeatedly that exceeding the 1.5°C threshold would unleash far more severe climate change impacts and extreme weather. They emphasize that every fraction of a degree of warming matters.
© Ed Hawkins, University of Reading
While notable growth is being seen in the renewable energy industry, greenhouse gas emissions driven by high and rising energy demand are causing global temperatures to increase at an accelerated rate not anticipated in previous studies.
This unfettered increase in global temperature continues to drive the world closer to irreversible tipping points in the climate system, like the widespread death of coral reefs being witnessed across the globe currently.
So, with clean energy not keeping pace with energy demand, policymakers and negotiators’ calls to slash the planet’s emissions at COP climate forums may continue to fall short, pushing the 1.5°C goal further out of reach and the climate crisis nearer to the doors of those least responsible.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that the 1.5° goal is on “life support” and will soon be dead.
Is it time for those nations banking on “1.5 to Stay Alive” to give up that hope? Should we instead find and demand a more feasible way forward that will lessen the blow of the impact on vulnerable communities and ensure as much preservation of life and home?
Where to next? Or was 1.5 the end of the road?
