WMO: Heat Builds in Next 5 Ye 05/28 06:48

   

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the next five years, the Earth is overwhelmingly 
likely to surge again and again past the international climate threshold set as 
safe and shatter its hottest-year record along the way, according to new United 
Nations climate projections.

   The World Meteorological Organization also forecasts an overheating Arctic 
that warms nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.66 degrees Celsius) between now and 
2030 and a dangerous drought with potential wildfires for the Amazon, a crucial 
part of Earth's natural defenses to lessen human-caused climate change. A 
hotter globe from the burning of coal, oil and gas means more extreme weather 
including floods, droughts and heat waves, scientists said.

   The projections by the U.N. climate agency and the United Kingdom's 
Meteorological Office said there's a 75% chance that the average global 
temperature between 2026 and 2030 will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees 
Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. That threshold is the agreed-upon limit 
of warming -- averaged over 20 years -- set in 2015 by the Paris climate 
agreement.

   A U.N. science report a few years later detailed how exceeding that 1.5 mark 
means more likely death, danger and species loss. Even though it's only a few 
tenths of a degree, some of the planet's ecosystems, such as coral and 
glaciers, can't handle the strain.

   Passing warming limit has consequences, but no cliff

   There's a 91% chance that at least one of the next five years will shoot 
past the 1.5 degree threshold and an 86% chance that one of those years will 
smash the record for Earth's hottest year set in 2024, the WMO report said. The 
WMO projects each year between now and 2030 to be between 1.3 degrees Celsius 
(2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and 1.9 degrees Celsius (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since 
the late 1800s.

   "It's important to note that (1.5) is not kind of a cliff edge that we're 
going to fall off," said report co-author Melissa Seabrook, a climate scientist 
at the U.K. Meteorological Office. "Every kind of 0.1 of a degree has more and 
more severe impact."

   She pointed to unprecedented May heat in Europe this week.

   An entire year or more above the 1.5 degree mark "means a whole range of 
extreme weather events, probably many so hot/wet/dry that it exceeds anything 
we've experienced in the past and thus crucially, anything our city planning, 
agriculture etc. has anticipated," Imperial College of London climate scientist 
Friederike Otto, who wasn't part of the report, said in an email. "This will 
mean many people will lose their lives, we are in for a lot of food price 
shocks, and more intense wildfires."

   Nearly all the shorter-term forecasts call for a strong El Nino --- a 
natural warming of parts of the central Pacific that alters weather worldwide 
and spikes global temperatures --- to form soon. The WMO report said it could 
stretch all the way to 2028. Because of that, Seabrook said 2027 will likely 
break the 2024 heat record.

   And if the next five years do average more than 1.5 degrees Celsius since 
pre-industrial times, that means Earth will have warmed a quarter of a degree 
Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) in a decade, which is faster than the 
previous rates of warming. Those were closer to two-tenths of a degree Celsius 
per decade.

   Climate scientists are debating whether global warming is accelerating, 
"which obviously is quite scary," and if these projections come true it would 
give additional evidence to those who see a speeded up rate of change, Seabrook 
said.

   Accelerating warmth forecast in the Arctic

   The projections, based on the averaging of about 200 runs of computer 
simulations using 13 different climate models from various countries, show 
warming in the Arctic rising 3.5 times faster than the rest of the globe, 
because there's less ice and snow that had been reflecting solar radiation to 
space, Seabrook said. It becomes a vicious cycle.

   "As the temperature warms, more sea ice melts, the worse this makes it," 
Seabrook said.

   Winters in the Arctic from 2020 to 2025 on average were 2.1 degrees 
Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1991-2020 average. The WMO 
projects the next five winters will average 5.1 degrees Fahrenheit (2.8 degrees 
Celsius) warmer than that recent normal, Seabrook said.

   The report also forecasts Arctic sea ice to continue to shrink in the summer.

   Amazon may get drier, sparking fire worries

   The report calls for even warmer and unusually dry conditions in the Amazon 
basin, and that could be devastating for both local residents and the planet as 
a whole, Seabrook said.

   People rely on the Amazon for water and the hotter, drier conditions should 
increase wildfire risk, Seabrook said, threatening to turn the Amazon, which 
now sucks heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, into a region 
that worsens the problem.

   Africa's Sahel area, which has been extra dry, is likely to get more than 
normal rain and that could lead to flooding, Seabrook said.

   United Nations officials said efforts to curb climate change haven't been 
enough.

   "Despite the progress of recent years, it's clear that global heating is 
still outpacing global efforts to contain it, and the baking temperatures in 
Europe, India and elsewhere show yet again the brutal human and economic 
impacts of humanity still burning colossal amounts of coal, oil and gas," U.N. 
climate chief Simon Stiell said about the WMO report.

   "Whether it's extreme heat, mega-storms, floods, massive wildfires or 
droughts hitting food supply and prices," he said, "every nation is already 
paying a huge price from this global climate crisis."

   **

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