Climate change: Earth’s 2025-29 temp likely to exceed 1.5°C limit

Climate change: There is a 70 per cent chance that the average global temperature for the 2025-2029 period will exceed pre-industrial levels by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to a new report published by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) on Wednesday.

It also said that there is an 80 per cent chance that at least one of the next five years will exceed 2024 as the warmest on record.

Besides being the hottest on record, 2024 was the first calendar year with a global mean temperature of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 baseline, the period before human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, began significantly impacting the climate.

The 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold is a target that countries agreed to at the Paris climate conference in 2015 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

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A permanent breach of the 1.5-degree Celsius limit specified in the Paris Agreement refers to long-term warming over a 20 or 30-year period.

Countries are required to submit their next round of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) or national climate plans for the 2031-2035 period to the UN climate change office this year. The collective aim of these climate plans is to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The WMO report said that the average global mean near-surface temperature for each year between 2025 and 2029 is expected to be between 1.2 and 1.9 degrees Celsius higher than it was between 1850 and 1900.

There is an 86 per cent chance that for at least one year during this period, the temperature will be more than 1.5 degrees higher than the 1850-1900 average.

The report also said there is a 70 per cent chance that the average temperature for the entire five-year period will be more than 1.5 degrees higher than the 1850-1900 average.

“We have just experienced the 10 warmest years on record. 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,” said WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett.

“Continued climate monitoring and prediction is essential to provide decision-makers with science-based tools and information to help us adapt,” she said.

The WMO said that in South Asia, recent years have been wetter than usual (except 2023) and this trend is expected to continue between 2025 and 2029, although some seasons might still be dry.

According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), India received above-normal rainfall during the monsoon season in four of the past five years.

The IMD has predicted above-normal monsoon rainfall this year.

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The WMO said the Arctic is expected to warm much faster than the rest of the world over the next five winters (November to March), by about 2.4 degrees Celsius, more than three and a half times the global average.

Sea ice is likely to shrink even more between 2025 and 2029 in parts of the Arctic like the Barents Sea, Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk.

From May to September during 2025-2029, some places like the Sahel, northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia are expected to have more rain than usual, while the Amazon is likely to be drier than normal, the WMO said.